Organisational resilience is defined by the British Standard BS65000 as “the ability of an organisation to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper”.

How to develop a resilient organisation

It is worth noting that the majority of the functions required to develop a resilient organisation already exist – the key element is bringing them together.

In developing organisational resilience, issues include:

• Emergency procedures (evacuations, suspect packages, bad weather)
• Security (personal, premises, information, cyber security)
• Health and safety (first aid protocols)

Above this is a level of organisational planning and management that allows protocols to kick in and for core work to continue in the wake of a crisis. These plans include:

• Business continuity management
• Incident management
• Crisis management
• Risk management
• Facilities management
• IT disaster recovery

And above this is a state of overarching strategic capability that allows you to identify any new or residual strategic risks in order to provide a systemic way to manage those risks. This includes carrying out internal and external audits to provide assurance that all processes are in place and functioning as they should.

Ensuring survival

Together, these functions develop an organisation’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from a disruptive challenge, providing assurance to current stakeholders as well as the future market, maintaining profitability and – critically – ensuring the organisation survives.

Contact us for business support enquiries

If you have any business support-related queries, including those to do with business resilience, contact our Business Support Team: 01494 927130 / [email protected].