In his new role as senior risk solutions consultant, Black will work with customers to ensure that their risk management adds value through building risk awareness and capability, improving performance, and assisting organisations in achieving their objectives.
Before joining the specialist insurer, Black spent six years as a senior risk adviser in the health, education, and community health areas within the Victorian state government. Before that, he spent 10 years in health services management. He also brings to the role an understanding of the challenges associated with running complex health services from his experience as a nurse.
“In my experience, organisations often do not maximise the effectiveness of risk management, nor link it strongly to achieving strategic objectives,” Black said. “Not from a lack of trying, but often because the risk framework is compliance oriented, cumbersome, and focused on incidents and issues.”
Black also identified four events which are game-changers for the care sector in assessing risk this year: the new national standards for childcare, the Royal Commission into the Institutional Response to Historical Child Sex Abuse, the development of the new Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
“These represent four enormous contextual changes for our sector,” Black said. “It means that people responsible for making decisions have to give consideration to the uncertainty that arises as a consequence of these four significant developments. This is where risk management becomes an essential component of the governance tool kit.”
