RISK ASSESSMENT SPREADSHEET
NARRATIVE
Instructions for Use
1. Enter the purpose, your department/unit information, the administrative structure to which your
department/unit reports, your name, date, and date for your next risk assessment.
2. Identify all internal and external risks. Identifying the risks includes asking yourself: What could go wrong
that would impact your ability to meet your objectives?
3. Classify the type of risk you have identified using one of the Risk Categories below. You may identified
multiple Risk Categories (i.e. S/R would be strategic and reputational). Then briefly describe the identified
risk.
4. List the ways in which the risk is currently managed.
5. Enter any comments or concerns with how the risk is currently managed.
6. Evaluate the IMPACT and LIKELIHOOD of the identified risk (see bottom of spreadsheet for definitions).
7. A risk calculation will provide your risk score, which will be plotted on the Heat Map.
8. The next step is to determine if you need to do anything additional, more or less, to reduce or control the
In this issue:
risk. It is important to consider whether the risk is under-controlled or over-controlled.
9. Classify the type of Management Strategy you have identified using one or more of the Management
Strategies below (mitigate, transfer, avoid, accept).
10. Please identify the person responsible and a target completion date to implement these actions.
11. After entering the above information for all the risks you can identify, click on the button that reads
“Click to update Heat Map” and the Heat Map will populate.
Risk Categories & Management Strategies
Key risk categories that OSU has defined include: Management Strategies:
Strategic (S): Events that affect our ability to achieve Mitigate (M): Risk mitigation is a measure or set of
our strategic goals and objectives. measures taken to reduce or eliminate identified
risks. The first strategy for mitigating risk is to
Reputational (R): Events that negatively affect public reduce the likelihood that the event will occur, the
perception and the University's reputation that may second is to reduce the impact that the risk would
lead to a loss of funding, enrollment, donations, and have if it did occur.
grants.
Transfer (T): This strategy involves the transfer of
risk through insurance and noninsurance
Financial (F): Events that lead to a loss of resources
techniques to shift the financial consequences of
needed to run operations, serve students, or conduct
loss to another party. This transfer does not change
research.
the risk.
Compliance (C): Events that violate laws, rules and Avoid (V): Avoidance is a risk control technique that
regulations restricting our ability to conduct business involves ceasing or never undertaking an activity so
processes, serve students, or conduct research. that the possibility of a future loss occurring is
eliminated.
Operational (O): Events that impact our ability to
conduct business processes, serve students, and Accept (A): Acceptance or Retention is a risk
conduct research. financing technique by which losses are retained by
generating funds within the organization to pay for
Life Safety (L): Events that lead to significant injury or the losses. This strategy involves acknowledging
loss of life. the risk and making the conscious decision to
accept it.
RISK ASSESSMENT SPREADSHEET
NARRATIVE
Risk Register
The Risk Register will populate with the information from the Risk Assessment Spreadsheet. The Risk Register
is a summary sheet of your identified risks, the actions to be taken, and who is responsible for implementation.
You will use the Risk Register to track the status, updates, target completion date and the actual completion
date. Once the action has been implemented, you will re-evaluate the IMPACT and LIKELIHOOD. The risk
calculation will provide you with a new risk score. The original risk score is also listed for comparison purposes
to show how implementing the risk management strategy affected your risk score. The risk scores are color
coded: green indicates a low risk, yellow a moderate risk, and red a high risk. Insurance and Risk Management
Services is available to assist in identifying risks and provide guidance on risk management strategies.
Tips for using this Tool
Tips for using this Tool
• When you open the tool, you may be prompted with warning to enable or disable a “macro”. To fully utilize
the tool, enable the macro.
• Some cells on each tab are protected to prevent accidental edits which may affect the tool’s calculations.
The cells shaded in gray and orange are protected; cells where you can enter information are white. Even
though some cells are protected, the spreadsheets can be reformatted (change font size or style, height,
width, etc.).
• There are some drop down boxes within the spreadsheets.
• On the Risk Register, you will need to AutoFit the Row Height if the text exceeds the space. This can be
done by highlighting the cells, clicking Home, then Format, and finally AutoFit Row Height.
