Is your business resilient?

In the latest in our blog series on resilience Christina Worsley from Newground CIC considers the traits that resilient businesses all share and the questions business owners should be asking themselves to gauge their resilience.

Today’s business environment is characterised by rapid, unpredictable change.  Businesses must be responsive and resilient in order to secure long- term survival, profitability and growth. A resilient business:

• Is able to resist threats rather than react to them
• Constantly identifies weaknesses in process or infrastructure and improves on them
• Gains a competitive advantage by planning for and mitigating potential disasters while other companies suffer
• Employ’s staff that are constantly driven to anticipate problems and innovate when opportunities arise.

Business resilience is about continuous change and improvement. Many will be surprised to know that half of businesses with no effective recovery plans in place fail within 12 months of experiencing a disaster - are you confident your business would survive?

When thinking of a disaster many businesses straight away think about flooding, as this is in the public eye.  Below are a few other things to consider

• Do you need electricity for you businesses to operate?  Do you have a back up generation?
• Is your data secure and backed up off site?
• Does your insurance cover business interruption? And is this cover high enough?
• How would severe weather affect your operations? Very high or low temperature, high wind, heavy rainfall.  Is travel required for your businesses operations?
• Have you considered your supply chain resilience?
• Do you have key personnel and what would happen if they left the business or were off sick for long periods?

Want to know more about business resilience and business continuity planning? Lancashire County Council is running a free event 'Business Resilience for Sustainability' on March 5th at Cotton Court, Preston. Find out more and book your place.