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Embrace a strategic approach to resilience to thrive in the era of constant disruption
In Asia, where economies are export-oriented and relies heavily on global supply chains, a disruption here has the potential to pose cascading consequences onto the rest of the world. With that said, organisations need to be truly resilient to not only recover and survive from disruptions but to also thrive. This is key to ensuring sustainable growth and to meet societal expectations amongst customers and the workforce.
In Singapore:
Having unaddressed resilience gaps is expensive in the long run
Investing into crisis resilience: a Singapore view
Singapore firms have been putting substantial amounts into their risk efforts to close current resilience gaps. The inability to address these gaps can be expensive for firms, often leading to large response costs. The required response effort costs cause a big concern, with 34% of respondents setting aside more than US$1 million for it.
Where are businesses investing for resilience?
Majority of organisations know the importance of investing into cyber resilience, business continuity management, risk monitoring and even workforce resilience. Almost 90% of respondents in Singapore have indicated “some investment’ or ‘significant investment’ planned in these critical aspects of resilience for the next two years.
After a catastrophic event, most organisations will move quickly to invest in building resilience. That is no surprise; even moderate disruption can be a prime motivator for change.
Leaders need to view investing in resilience as a strategic imperative, rather than a tactic motivated by compliance needs or fear. Those who act on that imperative with urgency will emerge from crises with invariably better results.
What are businesses in Singapore planning to invest into in the next two years?
(significant investment planned)
An integrated resilience programme is essential
Resilience programmes are too often siloed, with little coordination across functions. It is no longer sufficient for organisations to do so as they address today’s complex and interconnected risks. Enterprises are actively moving to an integrated resilience approach, centrally governing and aligning multiple resilience capabilities around what matters most to the business, and embedding the programme into operations and the corporate culture.
Thriving in permacrisis requires an executive leader and upskilled teams
We often refer to resilience as the enterprise’s immune system. Building immunity requires layers of resilience – from employees to leadership and the board. A successful resilience strategy and programme needs (1) sponsorship from the C-suite, (2) a programme leader with clear responsibility, and (3) a skilled team to do the day-to-day work.
Building operational resilience around what matters most
As more organisations move to integrate their resilience programmes, there is a clear trend toward adopting core principles of an OpRes approach that allows organisations to manage risks with high reliability and to drive efficiency.
OpRes focuses on establishing and continuously maintaining core elements of non-financial resilience, informed by a strategic view of what is most important to the organisation and its stakeholders. What is most important should determine business service outcomes — and not, as conventional business continuity approaches generally dictate, just the systems that deliver them.
Advice to resilience leaders
Build a business resilience framework that becomes a part of your organisation’s business-as-usual.
Design and implement technology resilience frameworks that enable an effective recovery for your critical business operations from technology incidents.
Conduct frequent exercises to validate your existing plans to be able to respond effectively during a crisis.
Encourage crisis preparedness through rehearsal of roles and responsibilities and scenario planning within your team to identify and remediate any existing gaps so that your organisation emerges from crisis stronger.
To help your workforce navigate risks, invest in training for your teams to grow their confidence, as part of your organisation’s Business Continuity Management (BCM) programme.
Equip your organisation with the right partners, processes and tools that are strategically aligned to your existing resilience planning to enhance and simplify the process.
