From Wordy to Worthy - The Case for Conciseness in Risk Reporting

Risk reporting is one of the most crucial parts of risk management. It involves collecting, processing, and then presenting the information about the issues faced by the organization. The information can be collected from the internet/external sources.

While presenting the information, there are several numbers of things that risk reporters need to take care of. One of them is conciseness. Interacting with data that is short and to the point, the audience can get familiar with the main purpose or concept without spending a significant amount of time.

Apart from this, multiple other reasons will help in understanding the case of conciseness in risk reporting. Continue reading this till to get familiar with those reasons.

The Importance of Conciseness in Risk Reporting

Below are some reasons that will help you efficiently understand the case or the importance of conciseness in risk reporting.

1.       Maximum Clarity:

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There is no doubt that risk reporting will provide critical information about issues and risks. However, for the efficient understanding of the audience, clarity is crucial. Thankfully, this can be easily achieved by writing concisely, let us explain how.   

When you (the risk reporter) write information without using unnecessary details or words & phrases, this will automatically bring clarity to your write-up. This will further make it quite easier for the audience to quickly grasp the highlighted threats.

2.       Actional Information:

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Do you know? the purpose of risk reporting is not just to inform individuals or organizations about the possible dangers/threats. It also involves encouraging the audience to take necessary actions. This will only be done when the report is only discussing the main information concisely.

For instance, by writing concisely, you can discuss the following:

·       What exactly is the risk – A short overview.

·       The consequences – highlight the consequences if the risk is not dealt with properly.

·       How it often will occur – discuss the chances (high, medium, or low) of the risk possibility.

When the audience gets familiar with all of these, they will be more likely to find solutions or techniques to tackle the potential danger.

3.       Maximum Audience Engagement

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Risk reports are often read by professionals who do not have enough time due to their busy schedules. So, serving them with a lengthy risk report may increase the chances that most of the audience will immediately start losing interest, all because of its length.

Fortunately, by writing concisely the audience engagement issue can be easily handled. When the risk report only discusses the main information shortly, the audience will be more focused while reading it, resulting in not only maximum understanding but also engagement.  

4.       Save Time & Effort

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This is obvious, skimming a lengthy report will definitely kill most of the time and effort. This further increases the chances that the audience may not have any motivation or energy left to take the necessary steps to deal with the potential dangers.

Due to this reason, it is necessary to keep the risk report as concise as possible, so that it can be reviewed quickly.

So, these are some of the reasons that we think will be more than enough for you to understand the case of conciseness in risk reporting.

How to Remain Concise in Risk Reporting

Below we have discussed some ways through which you can efficiently remain short and to the point in risk reporting.

1.       Write Sentences In Active Voice

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You should write sentences in an active voice. This is because the active voice is usually more concise and clearer as compared to the passive voice.

The active voice is when the subject is performing the main action. In simple words, the primary or main information comes first in active voice, and secondary information comes second.

To demonstrate this, check out the example below:

Passive voice sentence: We will notify every employee about the upcoming risk management conference in the next several days.

Active voice sentence: We will announce the risk management conference to all employees in the coming days.

As you can see, there is a difference between the word count of both active and passive voice sentences. This will definitely have an impact when most of your sentences are in active voice.

2.       Avoid Using Redundant Words

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To concisely, it is also necessary to avoid using redundant words. These are words that don’t have any meaningful impact on the sentence. Some examples of redundant words or phrases include:

·       Short & content

·       Actual fact

·       Advance planning

And many more.

So, to keep your report short, you should avoid using redundant words and phrases, instead, just explain the information in as few words as possible.

3.       Utilize a Summarizing Tool

Finally, utilizing a summarizing tool is one of the most effective ways to remain concise in risk reports. A summarizer is an online tool that will quickly condense your given text by automatically eliminating all the unnecessary words, phrases, or even details.

The good thing is that, during the condensing, the tool will not cause any harm to the original meaning and quality of your input text. So, there is no need to worry about it!

In order to illustrate better, we provided a risk report to a text summarizer to see how it would make it short. See the attachment below for output results.

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As you can see, the tool has quickly provided a short version of the given report. You can do the same as well to quickly embrace conciseness.

So, these are some of the most effective ways that you can take to keep the risk report crisp and concise.

Wrapping Up

While presenting a risk report to an individual or company, multiple things need to be taken care of. One of them is conciseness. A brief report will not only save time and effort for the readers but will also be clearer and more focused.

In this article, we have discussed the case of conciseness for multiple reasons. Besides this, we have also explained some ways through which you can remain concise while writing a threat report. 

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