Why is it important to undertake background check before hiring? | ANT Consulting

Every business in order to be able to operate stably and develop must first have an effective resource. In addition to material, technological, and machine resources, human resources are considered as an important resource that determines the success of an enterprise. It is important to conduct background check before hiring to confirm the information given by the employee reflects the truth.

Human resources are people who are directly involved in working for the business in different positions with the aim of creating values ​​and profits for the business, contributing to the development of the business. Thus, in order for businesses to be able to recruit capable and qualified individuals suitable for the position that the business is looking for, the business needs to have research and selection. Below is the necessary information that businesses can refer to be able to choose a suitable candidate.

Professional competence and skills are concerns that every business wants in its candidate. With high professional ability and good problem-solving skills, it will be a factor to help businesses develop well, satisfy customers, increase competitiveness with competitors… contribute to creating profits and improving location of the business. To find out this information, businesses can look in the information about the education and experience that the candidate provides or contact the previous company to confirm the accuracy of this information.

Besides, professionalism is also a necessary requirement that businesses should look for in candidates. It is shown in punctuality, polite manners, proper manners, responsibility for work, seriousness and respect for work, respect for colleagues and superiors, responsibility for work results, admit faults and get solution.

In addition, businesses should learn the personality of the candidate to know if the candidate is a good fit for their corporate culture. Because corporate culture is an “implicit” rule common to everyone in the business. Candidates who do not fit the corporate culture find it difficult to get along with everyone in the process of working together. Businesses can find this information in a candidate’s interests or activities section, or through candidate sources from a previous workplace.

Honesty, integrity, ethics are essential qualities of a good employee. That is the basis for businesses to trust and work long-term with candidates. Therefore, when choosing employees to work, businesses should consider this factor because candidates with these qualities will bring many benefits and be the basis long-term commitment. However, it is difficult for businesses to find out if a candidate is honest and integrity through just one interview. For important positions, businesses should carefully learn this information from the previous company or through the personal information channels of the candidate.

Moreover, there is a method that businesses can apply when selecting candidates that is taking a test. Through the test results, businesses can know about a lot of general information such as: attitude, skills of handling situations, reasoning and calculation ability of candidates when facing a problem and also in terms of cognitive ability, achievements, work experience, interests… From there, enterprises also assess the candidate’s ability to integrate and adapt.

In addition, the candidate’s resume, background check, personal reference are also a reliable basis for businesses to know about their working history, reputation of employee in previous assignment, work, previous criminal records or not, etc. There is evaluation and consideration when selecting suitable candidates.

These are the reasons why businesses need to find out information about candidates before hiring. Knowing what skills and characteristics to look for in current employees as well as when recruiting new employees ensures the quality of your human resources and leads to an efficient business. Hence, background screening has been increasingly important before hiring as part of risk management and risk prevention in Vietnam.

Read More

Risk Management In Enterprise | ANT Consulting

Risk and manage risk

Conceptually, risk is any uncertainty that may be harmful to the ability to successfully implement the business objectives of the enterprise. Businesses can identify potential risks to manage them. Fully understood, risk management is a process of a comprehensive review of the business operations to identify potential risks that may impact adversely to the operational aspects of the business. Based on that, the response solutions will be given corresponding to each risk. We can also understand that the risk management process is a process that is organized in a formal way and ongoing to determine, control and report the risks that can affect the achievement of the business objectives of the enterprise.

Requirements for operational risk management

To ensure that risk management activities are carried out as planned, the implementation must ensure the following requirements:

• Raising awareness about the risks as well as the ability to cope with risks appropriately throughout the enterprise;

• Formalize the process of risk management;

• Develop unified risk management processes in the enterprise;

• Transparency risks;

• Including risk management process as part of the internal control system;

In fact, well organized and efficient risk management activities will contribute to add value to the enterprise, specifically:

• Help improving operational efficiency and create competitive advantage;

• Contribute to the allocation and efficient use of corporate resources;

• Minimize errors in all aspects of business operations…

Recently, with the powerful impact of high inflation rate and economic recession caused by the global financial crisis to enterprises, people are concerning more about risk management activities. Many experts believe that well organized and effective operated risk management system will help businesses withstand and overcome fluctuations.

However, how to organize a complete risk management system is the fact that not many businesses are well understood. The worrying thing is many businesses supposing that with the use of insurance services, their businesses are making adequate risk management. That is completely incorrect.

Risk management policies and implementation

To establish risk management systems, enterprises should start from the development of risk management policy. This policy will define the approaching and managing of risk. In addition, risk management policies will clearly defined responsibilities for risk management throughout the enterprise to Board of Directors; The subordinate units; Departments; Risk management department (if any); the internal audit department – internal control. The implementation of risk management activities should be tied to business strategy, annual budget plan and the business cycle in the enterprise.

Risk Management Process

Basically, risk management processes typically include basic steps such as: confirmation of the business objectives, identify risks, description and classification of risk, assessment and risk ratings, response planning development, reporting an update on implementation, monitoring the process of implementation, review and improvement of risk management processes. Details of some of the main steps in the risk management process are as follows:

Confirmation of business objectives

Risk management activities are organized and implemented towards ensuring the successful implementation of the enterprise objectives. Therefore, at the begining the risk management process, the first task that business leaders need to do is confirming the operational goals of the business. This will be the base to ensure that risk management activities are held in the right direction.

Identify Risks

There are many methods to identify risk. Each method has different advantages and disadvantages. However, the following methods are considered using to determine the risk:

· Organize risk assessment workshop;

· Organize “Brain Attack” meeting;

· Questionnaire;

· Audit and inspection;

· Based on industry norms;

· Situation analysis

In fact, the method of determining risk that are used most in organizations is organizing risk assessment workshop. Attending the workshop are the Board of Directors and leaders of all departments. Members at the workshop will exchange information to give a list of business risks. In many cases, the result of the risk identification process is a long list of potential risks. However, this should not be too worried, the implementation of the next steps of the risk management process will help identify clearly the risks that are really the great risk to enterprises.

Description and classification of risk

After identifying potential risks, the next step is to describe briefly but specifically about the origin, cause, consequence and impact of each risks to the enterprise.

Next, we will implement the risk classification. There are many different types of potential risks for enterprises. They can originate inside or outside the enterprise. Based on the nature of the risk, they are many way to classify risk. However, the most common way is to classify risk into 4 groups as follows:

· Financial risk: interest rate, exchange rate, credit source, cash flow and ability to pay…;

· Strategic risk: competition, customer changes, industry changes, risks for research and development activities, intellectual property…;

· Operational risk: the leaders, corporate culture, violation of management rules, financial control, information systems…;

· Dangerous risk: environmental risks, supplier, natural disaster, risks for assets, contracts, products and services…

The classification of risks as above will help enterprises to manage risk in a systematic way.

Assessment and risk rating

Enterprise resources are limited while the number of the risks is great. So, the next step is to organize, evaluate and ranking risks according to priority level of response. Enterprises will analyze, evaluate each risk according to two criteria: the possibility of risk and the extent of the risks affecting the business if happened. The risk that the businesses need to prioritize response and prevent is the risk with high likelihood and degree of influence.

Develop response plans

Develop response plans is an important stage in the process of risk management. At this stage, enterprise should given the preventive measures and specific control should be taken to prevent and minimize damage if the risk occurs. There are 3 contents that must be determined for each specific risk when developing response plans:

1. Measures that should be implemented to prevent risks;

2. The completion deadline for those measures;

3. The person that responsible for managing that risk.

Monitoring the implementation of measures

In the process of implementation of response measures, businesses need to build a system of reporting regularly to ensure strict control of the implementation process. Enterprises also need to ensure that all shortcomings in the implementation of risk control measures must be timely reporting to leaders.

At the same time, business leaders must also build a culture of risk management to every staffs in the enterprise. It is high time that the corporate governance should seriously view the role of risk management activities, consider setting up and maintaining a risk management system in business. Practical experience shows that, once the risks are forecasted, enterprises can fully develop and deploy effective response plans for sustainable development.

Read More

Risk Management Necessity in Vietnam? | ANT Consulting

As Vietnam further integrates into the world business, more investors are eyeing Vietnam for investment. As part of investment due diligence, risk management are always well considered before foreign investors decide to do business with Vietnam partners.

In any parts of the world including Vietnam, risk is an inevitable factor in business operation activities; higher return is always accompanied by higher risks. Coping and managing risk is an integral part of any business in order to make profit and create value to shareholders in import export transaction, investment, or merger and acquisition activities in Vietnam.

However, in our daily consulting practice, we have seen a number of businesses whom do not manage risk effectively and furthermore not fully understand about the risks that they are facing.

Typical risks in developing countries like Vietnam are political risks, policy risks, regulations risks, credit risks, bribery and corruptions, and organized crimes.

On daily transaction in trading, according to Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade, there are situations a number of corporate scams between Vietnam and foreign enterprises are reported. In particular, foreign companies sell goods or provide services to partners in Vietnam and in return the Vietnam partner fail to pay.

On a larger scale in FDI through business formation or M&A origination and execution, businesses that do not improve the risk management process will have to face with a lot of different types of risks: serious financial losses, adversely affecting cash flows and the value of shares, decreasing prestige with customers, employees and investors.

Many business leaders often put heavy emphasis on the business activity, profit, and revenues instead of concentrating more on risk management especially understanding business partners through corporate intelligence investigation, background studying, adverse media search through professional consultants in Vietnam whom understand languages, cultures, legal environment and business practices. Further searches could help foreign investors to understand the company itself, owners, shareholders, members of board of directors of partner companies whom make daily decisions of the business.

In the period that global crisis has been predicted that almost bottom out and start to show signs of recovery, although the recovery process can occur with different speed and characteristics depending on sector and location of the business, the fully preparation of business in all aspects including process and risk management strategy could helps business not falling into the passive and also have more possibilities to take advantage of growth opportunities after the recession.

Recently in Vietnam with the impact of high inflation rate and economic recession caused by the global financial crisis, enterprises are increasingly concern about risk management activities. Many experts believe that an effective and well organized risk management system will help businesses withstand and overcome fluctuations.

Read More