Resilience is more than just the ability to weather a crisis. It is an organization's ability to anticipate and respond to change, not only to survive, but also to evolve.
Urgency for greater resilience
Responses to the Global Crisis and Resilience Survey suggest that resilience is at the top of companies' agendas. This is because almost all of them (97 per cent) have faced disruptions in the past two years.
- Compared to other strategic priorities, 46 per cent of respondents say resilience is very important. Another 46 per cent say it is ‘fairly important’.
- In the past two years, companies have particularly faced disruptions as a result of the pandemic (44 per cent), technology failures (37 per cent) or a cyber attack (37 per cent). One-fifth of respondents perceived difficulties in attracting and retaining employees as disruptive.
- Disruptions are expensive. 26 per cent of respondents suffered damages between five hundred and one million dollars. 21 per cent had to spend between one and five million dollars on direct costs and costs resulting from issues such as litigation and customer refunds.
'The results of this research reflect what we are seeing all over the world, not just in the Netherlands. In the last two years we have had to deal with unexpected and major disruptions. There have always been crises, but I see in the survey results that organizations have started to think differently about their impact. For example, in previous years' results, the impact of a crisis on one's own team hardly came up. Now half of the respondents say that disruptions have a great impact on employees. And that in turn has a direct impact on how you are able to deal with a crisis'
Challenges in establishing a resilience approach
Because urgency is high, almost all respondents have established a resilience program. However, the results of the Global Crisis and Resilience Survey show that organizations face many challenges in doing so. In most organizations, the resilience approach is well underway but has yet to mature.
- On the positive side, in a large majority of organizations (82 per cent), the C-suite is the primary ‘sponsor’ for the resilience approach. 67 per cent have designated a person or department responsible for its day-to-day implementation.
- However, only 17 per cent say they have a fully integrated approach to increasing the organization's resilience. A large majority say that approach is ‘somewhat’ integrated. Only two per cent say it is not integrated at all.
‘If an organization only reacts when a crisis is already occurring, it is too late. What this research shows is that more and more organizations are aware of and anticipate possible disruptive developments on the horizon. However, a crisis is not limited to one part of an organization. Therefore, it is critical that organizations break down existing silos and focus on integrating them into a single ‘enterprise resilience framework’. A starting point for this is centralized sponsorship and accountability to promote consistency among the existing elements of resilience. It is very positive that most survey respondents have clearly placed this responsibility in the C-suite.’
Everyone is investing in resilience, maturity varies
The Global Crisis and Resilience Survey shows that organizations are investing in resilience and, at the same time, that the level of maturity varies.
- Many organizations are in a build-up phase. Twenty to thirty per cent of respondents have for several aspects action plans in place that are aligned and regularly updated and improved. For the same percentage of respondents, however, similar plans are still in a rudimentary phase. The majority are somewhere in between.
- Almost all organizations are planning investments in resilience, for example in the areas of cyber and crisis management. Striking is that a significant proportion of the organizations surveyed are investing in employee resilience (37 per cent) and personal and emotional resilience (31 per cent).
If we consider the aspects of resilience as modules, we see customers investing in a modular approach based on the greatest risks they face. We see a shift from a narrow approach, e.g., cyber incident response after a hack, to a holistic approach to resilience regardless of the specific domain in which a crisis occurs.'
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PwC's Global Crisis and Resilience Survey 2023
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