Do you arrange trysts with the People and Culture (P&C) team? A tryst being a secret meeting between lovers 🙂

Or are your meetings with the P&C team specifically intended to discuss enterprise risks that they are responsible for, such as the ongoing challenge of attracting and retaining talent? Maybe it’s even worse? Maybe your meetings with P&C are to argue about who owns risk culture or what you need from them in the next engagement survey?

The best position you can be in, is having the P&C loving you and wanting to help create the best culture for the organisation, which includes behaviours depicting a great risk culture:  feeling comfortable to speak up and raise risks; having those discussions about risk required for good decision making and taking ownership for risks, to name a few.

How might you do this? First, acknowledge that risk culture is a sub-set of organisational culture. Second, recognise that P&C are the key support function to help management mould a great culture. Third, ask for their help to identify the behaviours that depict a great risk culture (I know you know them, but they need to come to the same conclusions and articulate them in their words) and how to assess the level these behaviours are portrayed – up, down and across the organisation.

In essence, if you are not working closely with the P&C team, opportunity abounds!