Strengthening business resilience in our turbulent times

The need to pre­pare, pro­tect and assist employ­ees when­ev­er and wher­ev­er need­ed has nev­er been more evi­dent. Not only is it a duty of care for any organ­i­sa­tion, and increas­ing­ly has poten­tial legal impli­ca­tions if employ­ees are not appro­pri­ate­ly pro­tect­ed, it is also high on the agen­da to help busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning and strength­en busi­ness resilience through a pro­tect­ed work­force.

Rob Walk­er, secu­ri­ty expert at Inter­na­tion­al SOS, says: “Secu­ri­ty events have result­ed in a sense of increas­ing chal­lenges, even in trav­el to places once thought secure. While risks are chang­ing, organ­i­sa­tions must ensure their actions to mit­i­gate those changes are pro­por­tion­ate, and based on real­i­ty and not per­cep­tion.

“With many organ­i­sa­tions increas­ing their busi­ness trav­el activ­i­ty,[1] it is essen­tial for deci­sion-mak­ers to be able to com­mu­ni­cate that objec­tive advice to their peo­ple, includ­ing in an actu­al cri­sis. Keep­ing informed and tak­ing into account all risk fac­tors will enable busi­ness trav­el to pro­ceed suc­cess­ful­ly, result­ing in a pro­tect­ed work­force and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity.”

Trav­el risk pro­fes­sion­als have told us the biggest chal­lenges that organ­i­sa­tions face in pro­tect­ing their mobile work­force are edu­ca­tion about trav­el risks, com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing a cri­sis and track­ing trav­ellers.[2] These are vital ele­ments to keep­ing your work­force safe and an indi­ca­tion of what is pre­oc­cu­py­ing man­agers.

They also indi­cate some­thing else as man­agers are in dan­ger of being drawn into details that could be addressed more effi­cient­ly; time spent track­ing peo­ple down and try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate could be reduced to make addi­tion­al time for address­ing the big­ger pic­ture.

We know trav­el risk pro­fes­sion­als are often mul­ti-task­ing across a num­ber of busi­ness objec­tives and that risk respon­si­bil­i­ties are shared across an organ­i­sa­tion, so co-ordi­na­tion and iden­ti­fy­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties is essen­tial, whether that is man­ag­ing addi­tion­al staff for a busi­ness objec­tive or ensur­ing cor­po­rate data is pro­tect­ed. The impact of this is, of course, ampli­fied dur­ing a major cri­sis, such as an extreme weath­er event or a ter­ror­ist attack which could affect a num­ber of per­son­nel rather than an indi­vid­ual.

So how do you save the time you’re los­ing? It all comes down to some­thing that may be com­mon­ly known, but is often not pri­ori­tised, putting in place an opti­mum busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan for busi­ness resilience in a cri­sis.

Busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning can be com­plex, so the effort of build­ing and main­tain­ing it can be daunt­ing, but is essen­tial, look­ing after your peo­ple, man­ag­ing client rela­tion­ships and not just pro­tect­ing your rep­u­ta­tion, but enhanc­ing it by embody­ing good prac­tice. There are some sim­ple steps that any organ­i­sa­tion can take.

TOP TIPS TO IMPROVE RESILIENCE

01 Think ahead: how will you respond?

Think through like­ly sce­nar­ios and review appro­pri­ate sources such as a risk map (www.travelriskmap.com). You prob­a­bly have pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence you can draw on too. What was best prac­tice? What are the like­ly pit­falls? What hap­pens if you or your imme­di­ate team are unavail­able?

Edu­cate your man­agers on what they need to do. Remind peo­ple of the role they need to play. Pro­tect­ing your work­force is everyone’s respon­si­bil­i­ty, but you can­not assume peo­ple will take this on intu­itive­ly. Spend time cre­at­ing aware­ness and sup­port so your man­agers feel a sense of own­er­ship. This gives you more help to draw on and, if your peo­ple have a duty of loy­al­ty, they will help you too.

02 Dur­ing an inci­dent: track, com­mu­ni­cate, assist

Set up a sys­tem that will alert your peo­ple. Make sure you have a trav­eller track­ing tool in place that will do the bulk of the work for you. You should also think about how and when you will get a mes­sage out to your whole organ­i­sa­tion.

Work out how you will check your peo­ple are OK. It is essen­tial to have this linked to your trav­eller track­ing tool, to ease the over­all man­age­ment of what’s hap­pen­ing. Ide­al­ly you will get the mes­sage out through two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion to improve the response rate.

Have a back-up plan in case you can’t man­age the cri­sis alone. Even the best organ­i­sa­tions may be out of their depth if the worst hap­pens. You will need a solu­tion that can emu­late your role if you are not in the office. One option is to nom­i­nate alter­na­tives; anoth­er is to out­source the check­ing process com­plete­ly.

03 The wash up: tem­plate your man­age­ment reports

This is sim­ple but very impor­tant if you want to show you are in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion. Set­ting up a report tem­plate will help you com­mu­ni­cate to your lead­er­ship and give you all piece of mind. Once again, hook­ing this into your trav­eller track­ing tool will mean you can report and com­mu­ni­cate in a mat­ter of min­utes.

Flex­i­ble response tem­plates are key, enabling fast mod­i­fi­ca­tion in a cri­sis, from cyber secu­ri­ty inci­dents to nation­al polit­i­cal upheaval.

Be pre­pared to sup­port and pro­tect your work­force with unpar­al­leled advice and assis­tance. Trav­el risk man­age­ment tools and ser­vices are key in help­ing organ­i­sa­tions pro­tect their mobile work­force in the most effi­cient way and mit­i­gate risks to strength­en busi­ness resilience.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.internationalsos.com

[1] Tal­ent Mobil­i­ty 2020 and Beyond, PwC

[2] Inter­na­tion­al Trav­el: Risks and Real­i­ty: The New Nor­mal for Busi­ness is an Ipsos MORI research study con­duct­ed among 1,119 busi­ness deci­sion-mak­ers across 75 coun­tries. Research was con­duct­ed online using rep­re­sen­ta­tive pan­els, Octo­ber 6–26, 2016