Businesses increasingly concerned about reputational risk: survey
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- Published: Friday, 22 January 2021 10:29
In its recently published 2020 Reputational Risk Survey, Willis Towers Watson found that 86 percent of clients are concerned about loss of income and a reduced customer base due to reputational risk. In a world where social media allows views and opinions to be shared globally in a matter of seconds, an organization’s reputation can change very quickly. With less stringent checks in place compared to traditional media outlets, it is easy to see why organizations are concerned about protecting their hard-won reputations.
Key findings from the survey of 200 global organizations include:
- Seven in ten (72 percent) report that risk management teams have at least some responsibility for the monitoring, measuring or management of reputational risk.
- Nearly the same proportion said that reputational risk is reported at the C-Suite (61 percent) or Board level (66 percent) within their organization. Almost eight in ten (80 percent) believe that the focus on reputational risk in their business will only increase in the coming five years. The majority of respondents highlighted that reputational risks could result in potentially crippling business outcomes for their organization such as loss of income (86 percent) and weakened human capital, because of their reduced ability to retain (62 percent) or attract (57 percent) talented employees.
- Framed against this increasing focus, most respondents pointed out that when it comes to measuring and monitoring reputational risk, they face real challenges in accessing reliable data (51 percent), with a large proportion (42 percent) indicating they have inadequate tools to do so.
