DESIGNING TO BUILD YOUR COMPANY'S RESILIENCE

Corporate Resilience (CR) is the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and most importantly, recover from negative events. CR seeks to minimize disruptions that impact employee security, interfere with critical businesses processes and potentially damage an organization’s reputation. Resilient-minded organizations continually optimize their disruptive event response processes and use learnings from each event to adapt to changing risk profiles.

Business Continuity (BC) provides plans and activities to recover critical business processes that were lost, interrupted or halted at the onset of an event. Continuity of operations is the lifeblood of every business, and a strong BC function helps businesses prepare effectively and respond decisively, with minimum disruption.

Crisis Management (CM) is how a company responds quickly and effectively to the consequences of a negative event. CM is focused on the strategic ‘what’ to do and takes into consideration how the impacts of a crisis event cascade across all business lines and operations, effecting brand, reputation and the trust that has been built up with stakeholders. An effective CM function requires a documented, repeatable process that drives analysis of the current event, fosters development of an overarching strategy, and helps structure the workstreams and actions needed to bring the crisis to resolution. Regular training and exercises are included as critical program elements to ensure the team is ready to respond quickly and efficiently, regardless of the nature of the crisis.

BC’s goal is to return to normal operations, or at the very least, sustain the bare minimum of critical processes that allow the company to operate. CM’s goal is to protect the brand, reputation, license to operate, and trust built up with stakeholders. Both require risk analysis, and comprehensive planning and preparation, including response simulation exercises.

Crisis Communications (CC) protects the trust you have built up with your key stakeholders: employees, investors, suppliers, government and regulatory agencies, and communities by effectively informing them of your response activity, recovery progress, and measures to mitigate future impacts. Every crisis situations develops, escalates, and subsides at its own cadence. Throughout that progression of unpredictable events, the CC team remains alert to every change, considers its impact, listens – and manages the company’s message – ensuring that what a business does and what it says publicly during a crisis event are always aligned.

The impact of unexpected events on companies is stark and sobering. In the year after a typical crisis, such as a cyberattack, extreme weather event, or a product recall, businesses face an average five percent drop in value. When poorly handled, a crisis will also damage the company’s reputation, restrict its ability to operate, and erode the trust of employees, customers and stakeholders. Companies that are prepared with successful planning and clear, effective communications experience quicker, and stronger recovery, while minimizing disruption and increasing strength. Further, companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of corporate resilience as a mission-driven duty of care for employees and the communities in which they work and live.

With the hyper-speed of information flow across the Internet and in particular social media, mid-tier businesses are facing an increasing and evolving risk landscape. The way events are managed by leadership, the company culture, community opinion – all coalesce with greater speed in the court of public opinion. In addition, pandemics like COVID-19 and the increased frequency and severity of natural disasters and weather events, have proven that there can be serious impact across industries, sizes and scales. Today, no company can really be under the radar. Whether it's local or regional within a business’ footprint, mid-tier companies can no longer afford to ignore or try to “ride out” negative events.

The impacts of a crisis event can include threat to employee safety and wellbeing, disruption of core business operations, physical property damage, revenue loss, supply chain disruption, loss of customer, investor and other stakeholder confidence, adverse legal and regulatory action, and reputational damage that can have both immediate and long-lasting negative effect.

The economic value of a strong corporate resilience function and culture will vary based on the company and its risk profile. Given that in the year after a typical crisis, businesses face on average a five percent drop in value, companies should consider having a cost-effective resilience function as a necessary and desirable measure for protecting employees, business assets and stakeholder interests.