KRM22 plc (LON:KRM) Executive Chairman Keith Todd caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their new partnership with Kintail Consulting, launching the People & Culture Risk Management solution, customers they are specifically targeting and why they chose Kintail Consulting to partner with.
Q1: You’ve announced a partnership with Kintail Consulting, can you explain to us what it is KRM22 are launching?
A1: We’ve made a launch of an initiative to focus on people and culture risk. People have always been an important of all businesses but in particular in a capital markets context, the whole challenge of managing risks associated with people and culture have become greater over the period.
We’ve launched what we know as our People and Culture Risk proposition to help HR Directors manage that portfolio of risks.
Q2: So, why are you launching it now?
A2: Well, we need to do a couple of things, first of all it was important that we found a partner we could work with because whilst we have lots of opinions within the company about people and cultural risk, we certainly aren’t naturally experts in this topic. Working with Chris Cherrington and Kintail Consulting, we found a really good partner that we can work with.
When we look at what happened last year with the pandemic, it really demonstrated to us as we were talking to customers, talking to people in the marketplace, that the challenges that were there around people management, leadership, building culture were even greater as a result of what happened through the pandemic.
Therefore early ’21 it seemed the right time to launch this initiative.
Q3: Why is it important though?
A3: It is important, I said earlier on it’s always been important, people are a critical part of business but one of the things which our company is all about is integration of components of risk. If one looks at the challenges that firms have in the capital markets around people, they fit very well aligned with class business objectives, priorities, giving people clearer accountabilities, that also is a direct link to the whole, for example FCA Senior Management Regime where regulators are now requiring great clarity around people’s specific accountability for aspects of running the business.
The tools to bring together all of these, I would say, component pieces that are involved around managing people, bringing them together have not been optimal is what I would suggest. By applying our Risk Cockpit in the use case of people and culture risk, we can really help HR Directors in particular, but firms more generally, bring together those portfolio of activity, initiatives, processes around people and culture risk in one place to have an oversight of them and understand what is working, what isn’t working, what might need some attention for the firm to undertake.
Q4: So, what customers are you targeting specifically?
A4: It’s very applicable for all customers but probably the practical reality is we’re more focussed on what I might call the tier 2/tier 3, the tier 1 players have very very large organisations and resources and have found different ways of addressing it. So, probably consistent with our original tier 2/tier 3 players.
This is applicable to all organisations, frankly not just capital markets, our focus remains in capital markets but the toolkit which our Risk Cockpit focus on HR and culture will do is applicable to other markets. Our sales though very much definitely in the capital markets context.
If I may just take a moment, and I’ve talked before about joining up the dots within organisations and I may run reference in a moment to Compliance and HR but we’re also talking about really getting the organisation engaged in this challenge. So, we’ve got an opportunity to educate and help HR Directors, we have with our Compliance offering in the company good contact with the Compliance Managers, we can bring the HR Director and the Compliance Manager together for a common view about the issues that overlap, they have shared accountabilities on. Likewise, with operational resilience and other areas where the Risk Cockpit has seen great practical use, it’s a way of helping firms join the dots.
So, when one part of an organisation adopts the Risk Cockpit, it’s just then an optionality for other parts of the organisation to use it for other use cases which it is very applicable to.
Q5: Finally, why did KRM22 choose to Kintail Consulting?
A5: I’ve known Chris Cherrington for quite a number of years and I’m aware of the work importantly that he’s been doing with leading capital market organisations around leadership and management and motivation. He is and his firm is very in tune with this challenge of really how do you optimise performance, our principal risk is alpha, risk isn’t always a negative, risk can be used and the proactive management of risk tools can help firms deliver greater and better busines performance than normal market performance.
So, I known Chris for a number of years and he’s very in tune with that thinking that actually people management, leadership, people risk management, cultural risk management isn’t a defensive mood, it’s very much something can be offensive.
Good talent with great subject matter expertise which is why we’ve done a partnership with Chris Cherrington and Kintail Consulting.
