How HR can prepare for the biggest business risks of 2024

Over the years, HR pros have been tasked with navigating a seemingly endless barrage of crises impacting their employees and their organizations, and it looks like 2024 will be no different.

International SOS, a company that helps HR teams identify and address risks, recently unveiled its 2024 Risk Outlook report. Based on a survey of 675 global senior risk professionals, it forecasts the major risks facing businesses this year.

According to the report, the biggest risks are:

• Climate change: ​​72% of respondents think it’s likely that extreme weather events will negatively impact their business’s operations in the next 12 months, but around 50% have not incorporated climate change into their health and security plans.
• Mental health: 80% said employee burnout is an imminent risk, and 41% feel their organization is not equipped to handle it.
• AI: 50% said they’ve been exposed to misinformation about health and security issues as a result of using AI tools.
• Global instability: 74% expect ongoing geopolitical issues to impact their organizations within the next year.

“Organizations will have many risks to address in 2024, as instability continues to be a key theme of the global security environment,” Sally Llewellyn, global security director for International SOS, said in a press release. “The near-continuous pace of crises makes it even more challenging for organizations to navigate.”

Zoom out. In order to mitigate these risks, HR pros need to be proactive and take time to educate themselves on these different issues so they can create strategies and policies that will help deal with these challenges, Henning Snyman, security director for International SOS South Atlantic US region, told HR Brew

“Risk doesn’t keep office hours,” he told HR Brew. “That’s the reality that everyone needs to understand and HR needs to be more realistic in understanding the risk environment, and also equally important is understanding how these risks are affecting the workforce—and at the end of the day, how it affects the organization’s ability to function, to be profitable.”

Take, for example, the risks posed by geopolitical crises. Snyman suggested HR leaders review and update their corporate travel policies.

“A lot of the time, your travel department sits within HR and they will have a travel policy in place,” he said. “But they don’t have a travel risk management policy in place, which focuses on the risk associated with travel—those two policies need to be aligned.”

An employer might want to consider eliminating the price cap it places on employees’ hotel accommodations if the property has higher safety standards than its less expensive counterparts, helping employees to stay safe and have peace of mind while traveling.

“It’s important for HR to have flexible solutions in place,” he said. “Creating that safe and secure work environment is really important and it's going to remain so because we live in uncertain times.”