Building the Foundations for Navigating Uncertainty and Risk: a C-Suite Perspective
Snapshot
- C-Suite executives from Healthscope and Mirvac address current and future risks affecting the health and construction sectors.
- Effective leadership is crucial for both companies to drive strategy and culture, with a particular emphasis on rebuilding after the pandemic and ensuring enterprise value.
- Both companies are implementing strategies to manage talent shortages, boost sustainability and prepare for potential cyber-attacks.
Global challenges and uncertainties are fuelling risk drivers creating huge challenges for business in managing and predicting emerging issues.
The interconnected risks that companies are facing today, amplified by global uncertainty, were a key focus at the Aon Insights Series Pacific. But what measures are the C-Suite taking to manage the current risks while predicting and mitigating future risks? Healthscope Chief Medical Officer Victoria Atkinson and Mirvac Chief Financial Officer Courtenay Smith shared insights on how their organisations are tackling critical risks in their supply chain, technology environment and workforce planning and explore how they are advancing the sustainability agenda for their industry.
Supply chain: seizing opportunities in global trade
While there can be no doubt supply chain risks were disruptive to both health and property in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Mirvac are now turning global trade volatility to their advantage. “The pandemic played havoc with our pricing of materials and we’ve had the sustainability lens adding to the complexity,” says Courtenay. “At this time we’re seeing more opportunity to seek competitively priced materials from China, which is helping us realise greater value from our projects as local labour costs remain high.”1
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Addressing talent shortages
A talent crunch in both healthcare and construction is expected to disrupt productivity and growth for both sectors. “Research from the Mayo Clinic shows that burnout in healthcare workers is very prevalent which is a major risk we are contending with, however it also shows that our people only need to love 20% of their job to feel connected and stave off burnout” says Victoria. “But perhaps the biggest people risk we face is having the leadership we need. Leaders are seeing what it’s taking to rebuild after the pandemic and it’s daunting. But if we’re to drive the strategy and culture it takes to protect enterprise value capable leaders are essential.”2
As a property company delivering across the entire value chain, Mirvac is focused on elevating belonging and inclusion in their talent strategy. “Property and construction is a very competitive industry for talent and it’s our aim to appeal to candidates as a workplace where people can be their best and feel like they belong,” says Courtenay. “It’s a challenge to bring more women into the construction part of our business because of the working hours required. One of our programs is to support more women to undertake undergraduate degrees in engineering, for example, so we can have more women in our future talent pool. We believe what gets measured gets done so we measure diversity and our executives are held responsible for making progress.”1
“People in our IT, finance or procurement teams choose to work in health
Victoria Atkinson, Chief Medical Officer, Healthscope
because patient care matters to them. To retain these employees we need to
connect that purpose to their day-to-day work.
The reason they joined our company must be palpable in their job.” 5
Technology: managing network transformation and potential threats
One of the greatest technology risks facing our global healthcare systems is the different speed for technology uptake across the patient journey. “There are areas where technology is being used very effectively – in operating theatres for example,” says Victoria. “Ongoing use of paper-based, legacy systems elsewhere results in many disconnected elements to manage. We are exploring ways to map the growing volume of data and dashboards to the whole patient journey to find the points where incompatible systems are creating risks.” Resolving this issue promises to both improve the patient experience and remove pain points for Healthscope employees.2
Cyber risk is also an issue in both healthcare and construction with the potential for attacks to shut down operations.
“To defend against cyber risks we need to ask what assets have I got
Courtenay Smith, Chief Financial Officer, Mirvac
that can stop my business operating, including our exposure to third party systems.
To test these vulnerabilities, we run simulations throughout the year
for different incidents including cyber and we have our board involved
as well as our executive team and other functions.” 1
A sustainable future: tackling embodied carbon and waste
A challenge and opportunity for both businesses is to be a sustainability leader in their sector.
For Victoria, waste is the major issue giving Healthscope an opportunity to take the lead. “Historically, we have been given ‘license’ to create an abundance of waste because we save lives, which was inherent to our management of the pandemic and PPE” she says “We balance the risk of infection and spread of illness with the risk to the environment of disposing of so much medical waste. But patient and staff expectations are changing and one of our hospitals have worked with a large waste services provider to set up an intricate waste management and recycling system that we’re now looking to scale across our facility network.”2
Mirvac has already achieved net zero in their Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions and are now tackling the challenge of Scope 3 emissions in their supply chain. One of their recent initiatives has been to issue Mirvac’s first green bond. “With the introduction of mandatory reporting on carbon emissions, we know this will be at the forefront of equity investors holding businesses accountable,” says Courtenay. “Based on our experience in raising $400 million in green bonds, we’ve learned the fixed income market is way behind equity markets on this.”1
References
[1] Courtenay Smith, Aon Insight Series Pacific 2024, 15 October 2024.
[2] Victoria Atkinson, Aon Insight Series Pacific 2024, 15 October 2024.
