The Role of Management in The Continued Impact Of The Coronavirus Pandemic

It seems that the disruptive and devastating effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will continue to cost all companies and countries of the world. The disease has impacted our collective commercial mindset, including the capital markets, our daily business transactions.  Companies must accept, acknowledge, and find the longer-term solutions to the consequences as CORONA/COVID19 as the aftermath is here to stay even after a vaccine has now seen the light of the day.

Exceptional situations necessitate extraordinary governance. Internal Audit leaders must reach out to key business leaders and offer their team’s assistance. For example, your organization may be diverting critical facility operations to another location or creating redundancies in its supply chain for scale. There may be additional risk factors in these operational changes that need to be considered. Changes in the organization as a response to challenges create an opportunity to refine and enhance the risk management processes to protect the organization better.

The recent coronavirus events have unfolded it is an essential reminder that neither audit plans nor the ways of accomplishing work are static:

• Adopt an agile way of thinking to scrutinize plans and reprioritize any upcoming assessments based on the regulatory requirements
• Conduct scenarios to identify the ability to execute them in a potentially disrupted environment.
• As the situation evolves restrictions and change, consider the reviews without physical access to corporate locations.

Longer-term consequences as COVID are here to stay

It will be critical to regularly recalibrate remote workers’ perspectives by reconnecting them to your purpose. It is a strange feeling when a team cannot work efficiently together, side by side. Suppose a decision is made that team members in specific geographies work from home. In that case, your team members will need the appropriate technology resources and some guiding principles on conducting themselves in this unusual time. You will need to consider how your team’s operating model works and what changes will be necessary to meet your mandate.

Checklist: develop ground rules and identify changes that impact the business:

The Board and senior management must communicate with their teams and work with the business to understand these challenges and provide appropriate support.

– with more, virtual meetings across different time zones and more virtual interactions interpret the new paradigm related to discipline, accountability, and productivity.

– remote work by team members may increase responsibilities outside of work and create social challenges.

– strategize the time component. – consider the long-term effects and restrictions that might be extended in the future. Work and think differently and identify activities that decrease/increase employee capacity.

– this is an opportunity to catch up on uncompleted tasks or create a more meaningful impact on the organization’s risk management capability in new and different ways.

– review how to use digitally-enabled strategies to bring more insight and assurance to the enterprise?

– consider how those same technologies can improve how their internal audit function delivers value.

Participate in one or more of our online seminars to get more guidance on the above.

https://www.copenhagencompliance.com/2021-global-it-governance-day/

https://www.copenhagencompliance.com/2021-risk-management-day/

https://www.copenhagencompliance.com/2021-board-of-directors-day/