It is quite impossible to handle a crisis if unknown. Dealing with a crisis requires timely decision-making, given the dynamic environment. To develop this competence, to have the capabili...
It is quite impossible to handle a crisis if unknown. Dealing with a crisis requires timely decision-making, given the dynamic environment. To develop this competence, to have the capability to foresee, understand, analyze, and manage a situation in real-time. This is when one needs to Build Organizational Resilience. Underlying the well-timed and successful emergency actions are myriad short-term and long-term strategies. Those define the organization’s preparedness for a crisis.
At the time of crisis, the immediate consideration of the organization is to mitigate the threat. It is through proactive measures for quick recovery and getting back to ‘business as usual’. Thus, the degree of damage to the business is generally determined by measures. Also, its impact on customers or key stakeholders.
Having a strong response to that very moment along with seamless management and crisis leadership is the key focus. But these are post facto measures, that is, once a crisis has occurred.
If an organization is able to resume operations immediately after an emergency, it is considered well-prepared for potential threats. However, the end of a crisis is usually the beginning of learning lessons from the crisis management experience.
It is a period when organizations can and should draw deeper insights through analytics, understanding threat scope, and ensuring context prioritization. These are some of the key first steps to building resilience in an organization.
Building resilience within
Let’s get to the fundamentals of resilience. Is resilience a process? Does it imply structural changes or something more? How do you Build Organizational Resilience?
Resilience is used as a label to recycle old ideas across teams in disaster management, says reports. Operational resilience isn’t a one-time task, a process, or a system. It’s an ongoing collective responsibility.
In the long run, setting a framework is important to enable business continuity. A holistic approach makes it possible to recognize potential threats to the organization and their impact on business operations. It helps your organization understand critical processes in all business areas including, IT, finance, security, etc., and it provides the framework for building organizational resilience.
To build resilience within an organization, it’s essential to understand the difference between recovery (response) and resilience (capability to prevent and respond). Going beyond business continuity, organizations need to achieve operational resilience, to not only return to normalcy but to be able to handle other crises so as to continue day-to-day operations with minimal impact on the business and have a strategy in case of the next occurrence.
In a 2014 survey, over 25 percent of organizations lost critical applications or files for multiple days following a crisis, and 20 percent of companies reported post-incident losses ranging from $50,000 to $5 million. With a resilience strategy in place, the organizations would be able to perhaps mitigate and reduce the losses during the next occurrence of some incident/ threat.
Digital tools for crisis response
In the digital era, one of the most effective ways to streamline crisis response is to digitize business continuity plans and related documents. This makes data analytics, referencing, and updating plans easier. Information technologies enable up-to-date information and planning details. Mobile crisis management tools enable the instant sharing of information with employees and other stakeholders. This, thereby keeping them abreast of crisis strategies.
Working through a crisis management process creates a clear understanding of how the organization operates. Although the process is looking at potential points of failure, it can be useful in assessing loopholes.
Preparing employees for potential threats
While we must seek to identify and resolve threats in critical business processes. We must also put appropriate resilience and recovery arrangements in place. Since threats exist at a number of levels. It necessitates having each and every employee prepared for a potential crisis. This minimizes the impact of an emergency situation and ensures a more seamless return to normalcy.
Well-established response plans
A quick and effective response is a priority to manage a crisis. Emergency response plans are structured and practiced on a regular basis. Unarguably, organizations that strategize resilience on multiple levels are more likely to prevent major incidents that threaten their value.
Is there such a thing as 100% foolproof crisis management plans? Perhaps the frequency of crises is evolving as are the tools. However, it’s always a plus point if the organization is prepared. Software such as Ascent’s AutoBCM can help you Build Organizational Resilience plan. It can help you analyze and manage a threat when it occurs and helps mitigate risks before it occurs.
References:
What does operational resilience mean ||Crisis management by Deloitte
How can I be sure it won’t happen to me – Deloitte blogs ||Talking resilience when an outage becomes a crisis PWC blogs
