Businesses lacking in resiliency efforts

A new international survey has found that while business leaders have recognised resilience as a core competitive advantage, too many of them are falling short on the resiliency elements they need to be successful.

According to the bi-annual Pricewaterhouse (PwC) Global Crisis and Resilience about 91 per cent of the 1 812 respondents worldwide reported that they have experienced at least one disruption other than the pandemic.

In fact, the top five reported disruptions included the COVID-19 pandemic, employee retention and recruitment, supply chain, technology disruption or failure, and cyber attack.

The survey further noted that business leaders overestimate their resilience despite operating in an age of disruption.

The report said that excluding the pandemic, the supply chain disruptions had the greatest impact on organisations monetarily or otherwise, and they have doubled since 2019.

“More than half (60 per cent) of organisations whose most serious disruption was supply chain-related, were most concerned about experiencing a similar disruption again,” said the report.

“While 70 per cent of business leaders expressed confidence in their ability to recover from various disruptions, the survey data shows that many organisations lack the foundational elements of resilience they need to be successful. This confidence gap puts organisations at risk of being exposed – particularly when the disruption spotlight is solely on them, as opposed to broader global or sector challenges,” it said.

The report indicated that 89 per cent of respondents said that resilience was one of their most important strategic organisational priorities, indicating that “organisations are creating a resilience revolution”.

“After a tumultuous start to the decade, it is unsurprising that nine in ten (91 per cent) of organisations report they have experienced at least one disruption other than the pandemic.

On average, organisations experienced three-and-half disruptions in the last two years. Three quarters (76 per cent) said their most serious disruption had a medium-to-high impact on operations – disrupting critical business processes and services and causing downstream financial and reputational issues, according to the report.

Tracie Greenidge, Director of Risk Assurance for PwC East Caribbean, said: “As business leaders face an unprecedented level of disruption and uncertainty in today’s environment, resilience has become one of the most vital strategic priorities in the corporate world.

“To build a trusted and agile organisation, it is vital that business leaders invest in resilience across functions and people, and focus on an integrated approach, supported by technology to enable a panoramic view of their risk and resilience landscape,” said Greenidge.

PwC said the survey data revealed three significant trends driving what it called “a resilience revolution” – an integration approach, strong leadership and a programme approach.

“Businesses are actively moving to an integrated approach to resilience, centrally governing and aligning multiple resilience capabilities around protecting what matters most, and embedding the programme into operations and the corporate culture,” it said.

“Thriving in permacrisis requires an executive leader and upskilled teams. A successful resilience strategy and programme needs executive sponsorship from the C-suite, a programme leader with clear responsibility and a skilled team to do the day-to-day work,” it added.

As it relates to the programme approach, PwC explained that this involved building resilience around what mattered most while prioritising investment based on what was critical to the organisation and stakeholders.

“This allows organisations to manage risks with high reliability and to drive efficiency. Those who have moved to an integrated resilience programme are significantly further ahead in many of the core elements of operational resilience, including risk and threat assessment processes, exercising and testing and service and process dependency mapping, enabling companies to build a robust corporate immune system where an organisation can adapt, flex, and move forward stronger,” it said. (PR)