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The Five Pillars of People Risk: Asia

28/07/2021 · 2 minute read

Mercer Marsh Benefits’ new research examines 25 of the most pertinent threats to employers in Asia today to help stakeholders identify, understand and prioritise which risks should be addressed through employee benefits plans, health insurance and other initiatives to minimise the impact to their organisation. 

“The pandemic has accelerated people risks to the top of the pedometer for risk managers. Poorly designed employee benefit plans can undermine the health and engagement of employees and not to mention, the employer branding of a firm.”

Joan Collar, Asia and Pacific Regional Leader, Mercer Marsh Benefits

By hearing first-hand from 744 Risk Managers and 637 HR professionals across the globe, we learned which people risks would have the most severe impacts and the barriers preventing firms from mitigating them.

These are the 25 people risks as grouped under five pillars:

Building a risk management framework

The 25-people risk framework can help the Risk Managers and HR teams articulate in board-level conversations the consequences of not acting now to manage these exposures, such as the rising cost of medical insurance. It starts at the top, the Executive Leadership Team needs to partner with HR and Risk Managers to help protect, equip, and motivate the organisation’s critical asset; its people.

Top threats facing organisations

According to Risk Managers and HR professionals, talent attraction, retention and engagement (#1), cyber security (#2) and data privacy (#3) were the top 3 people-related risks in terms of likelihood and severity of impact to businesses today.

Blind spots

Several blind spots in Asia were found where the ranking of the risk did not match up with the level of emphasis on addressing it and the three blind spots identified are health and safety risks; non-communicable health conditions, deteriorating mental health and workforce exhaustion. 

Understanding the barriers

Risk and HR managers alike said the biggest difficulty in managing people-related risks was that their organisation lacked skilled resources to understand the risks and senior leadership engagement.  

A shared responsibility

It is important to have the agendas aligned for both HR as well as Risk Managers to collaborate and create a greater impact.

Employee benefits can be used strategically to manage a range of threats and build workforce and business resilience. 

To get a copy of the Asia report, please fill out the form above.

Click here to view the infographic.