Risk register

Doing this allows you to prioritise them and make notes on how you can act to mitigate them.

The risk register template you can download below has the following columns:

• What is the risk? Give a brief outline of the risk and how it may affect your business
• Likelihood: Grade the risk by the probability of it affecting your business, where 1 shows it's very unlikely to impact your business and 5 denotes it's very likely to have an effect
• Severity: Rate the risk by the severity of its potential impact, where 1 shows it would have a small impact and 5 denotes the risk could threaten to shut the business down
• Risk factor: Multiply the likelihood grade with the severity rating to calculate your risk factor. Typically, items with a value of 1 to 8 are considered low risk, with those rated 9 to 14 a medium risk, and anything above that is a high risk. This can also be calculated by using a risk matrix
• Mitigation: Outline what your business can do to limit the likelihood and/or reduce the severity of this risk
• Priority rating: Prioritising risks can help bring focus, which is particularly important when workloads are high
• Action and who is responsible: Refer to your mitigation column and allocate which member of the team is taking which action to bring the risk factor down

By detailing the risks in this fashion, considering their severity, likelihood, and how you can act to reduce these, you can get a better grasp of the challenges your business is facing and develop a plan to tackle them.