Organisational culture plays a big role in good risk management — if staff feel like they’ll get in trouble for notifying management about something not quite right, it’s less likely a problem will be addressed before it develops into something bigger.
So it’s with concern that the NSW Audit Office has revealed that a significant number of public servants would not feel safe reporting things that have gone wrong.
In a report into risk culture and capability, the auditor found that in the agencies it examined, 18% of staff surveyed in four agencies said that if things went wrong they would not feel safe in calling these out. Another 12.5% of staff neither agreed nor disagreed.
“When even a small number of people are deterred from…
