Types of Business Resilience Companies Need to Strive For

Protecting Your Business

Companies strive to protect what they consider valuable to the organisation, especially its continued operations. With the rapidly changing business environment on a global scale, building business resilience offers value beyond monetary benefits. Promoting operational resilience is critical to the concurrent value strategy.

But what is business resilience? A business resilience strategy is the proactive ability of a company to absorb the impact of threats external and internal and maintain critical business operations. Since no company is immune to business disruption, it goes without saying that building business resilience should be a priority.

Why is Business Resilience Important?

Business resiliency is crucial for businesses of all sizes. It's essential because of the dynamic business environment, which constantly faces threats of change and unpredictability. The unknown pushes organisations to its boundary and stretches their ability to adapt.

Therefore, business resilience is not just about your ability to maintain operations but also about performing at your desired level despite the altered circumstances, or at least within your acceptable predefined levels before the crisis.

For example, a sudden disruption might force your organisation to change its processes due to limited supply and raw materials access. But the real challenge lies in ensuring you can sustain customers' expectations about product quality and efficiency of processes.

Types of Business Resilience

There are different types of business resilience to ensure your company maintains its business resilience standards in the face of different threats.

Financial Resilience

Financial resilience refers to an organisation's ability to withstand various economic challenges, such as a recession, financial loss, and market volatility. A financially resilient company can maintain a healthy cash flow and diversity in its revenue stream as well as reduce debt levels.

Businesses can achieve financial resilience through prudent financial management strategies and effective cost-control measures. Building financial reserves and protecting shareholder value is also imperative for companies to achieve financial resilience. These business continuity management efforts enable you to withstand any uncertainties in the market and support the business financially under any circumstances.

Organisational Resilience

Organisational resilience is when a company can face disruption, adversity, or change with agility and responsiveness. These companies can predict and proactively manage risks, especially the risks that are unique to their industry.

Organisationally resilient companies have a culture of innovation and continuous learning. They embrace change, look at the challenges as opportunities for learning, and adapt their approach to survive setbacks.

Operational Resilience

Operational resilience refers to the company's ability to ensure critical business functions and operations, regardless of external threats and market conditions. It involves robust planning, risk management, and integrated implementation of a business resilience strategy to maintain critical business systems and processes.

These companies maintain clear communication channels and effective coordination to ensure operational continuity. They properly designate tasks to employees to ensure that every aspect of the organisation and business operation is running smoothly, maintaining the trust of customers and the confidence of stakeholders.

Also read: Operational Resilience vs Business Continuity

Reputational Resilience

Reputational resilience demonstrates a company's ability to recover from situations or events that could lead to reputational damage. These companies achieve that through a well-thought-out branding strategy and crisis communications that enable them to maintain a positive company image. They also achieve reputational resilience through transparency with customers, maintaining ethical practices, and proactive communication.

The effective management of potentially leading to reputational damage reassures customer satisfaction and a commitment to resolve mistakes. Aside from retaining your existing customers, reputational resilience also helps to win over new business.

Cyber Resilience

Cyber resilience, also known as data resilience, refers to improving technology infrastructure designed to detect, prevent, respond to, and recover from cyber attacks or incidents. Nowadays, the risk of cyber threats is high, so it is crucial to implement a robust cybersecurity plan and protocol.

Your cybersecurity strategy must include encryptions, firewalls, and other cybersecurity practices. Employee training is also integral to maintaining cyber resilience, especially when using company software and hardware systems. Plus, cyber resilient companies have a contingency plan to help faster recovery from cyber attacks and threats.

Supply Chain Resilience

Supply chain management is critical to maintaining business operations for most organisations. Your ability to support supply chain resilience avoids disruptions limiting your access to raw materials and services vital to your business processes.

Ensuring supply chain transparency, maintaining a good relationship with suppliers, and having a backup plan can mitigate potential supply chain disruptions. Building redundancy and adaptability can prevent supply chain disruptions, allowing you to maintain services and deliver goods to your customers.

What Does a Resilient Company Look Like

Business resilience is when a company possesses distinct characteristics that enable them to absorb stress following a disruptive event and navigate sudden disruptions with minimal damage or impact. These qualities allow a resilient company to thrive in a changing environment despite challenges and heightened risks, which means they are better prepared for whatever significant disruption awaits them.

Agile Leadership

Leadership is an essential aspect of business resilience. Companies that display resilience have agile business leaders who quickly identify potential threats and risks and respond to them promptly to avoid causing tremendous damage. Their ability to rapidly make informed and smart decisions enables them to steer the company through moments of uncertainty and challenges.

Continuous Improvement

Companies that exemplify business resilience are the ones who do not stop once they have developed a business resilience strategy. These organisations and their employees are aware that threats and risks constantly evolve, so they continue to adjust accordingly.

Therefore, their existing business continuity plans are not set in stone. Instead, they constantly reassess their business continuity management strategies to best suit changing business environments and ensure they have the correct protocols to handle any threat.

Adaptability

Naturally, companies that demonstrate business resilience have a culture of adaptability. This mindset enables employees within an organisation to embrace change, assess risks, and learn from past mistakes. They use these insights to improve their business continuity management strategies to achieve business resilience.

Prioritise Employee Well-Being

Resilient companies prioritise the well-being of their employees. These organisations know their employees' role in ensuring business continuity and resilience.

Thus, they invest in a supportive work environment by promoting work-life balance and motivating employees. These organisations also realise that employees are vital in executing their business continuity plans, so they must be trained and well-equipped.

Crisis Preparedness

Business resilience enables companies to prepare for a crisis by proactively analysing potential threats and building a robust crisis management strategy. Business resilience planning involves continued risk assessment, testing the response mechanisms, and adjusting crisis management protocols.

Final Thoughts

Business resilience encompasses various aspects of business operations. The organisation's ability to navigate a disruptive event is critical for its long-term success and sustainability.

Book a demo today to see how C2's Meridian BCMS can help your organisation achieve business resilience and continuity.