Given ever-shifting business, economic and social realities, nothing is more important to a company’s long-term survival than the ability to adapt to and recover from disruptions.
But what exactly constitutes resilience — the common term for such an ability — can be defined differently from company to company.
Among 550 business leaders surveyed by Grant Thornton, 80% cited “the ability to maintain core operations under stress or disruption” as a descriptor of what “enterprise resilience” means to their organization.
However, there are many other elements to resilience — everything from “continually learning from past disruptions” to “having a workforce that’s cross-trained, supported and ready for change.”
Grant Thornton noted in its report that approaching resiliency as a practice, rather than a checklist, better positions companies to anticipate and react to disruption.
Resilience also equates to efficiency. The research, in which participants rated their company’s level of efficiency, revealed a strong link between the two qualities.
Based on responses to various survey questions, Grant Thornton separated the participants’ companies into “high-efficiency” and “low-efficiency” categories. Additionally, those polled were asked, “Compared to your industry peers, how would you describe your organization’s resilience?”
Among respondents from high-efficiency companies, 71% rated their resilience as “above average,” compared to 28% of their low-efficiency counterparts.
The report highlighted five capabilities that differentiate high-efficiency organizations:
1. Prioritizing formal workforce resilience programs. Two-thirds (66%) of the high-efficiency companies, but just 30% of the others, operate formal workforce resilience programs to strengthen adaptability and employee well-being. One in five survey respondents said they address workforce resilience only when turnover or burnout occurs.
The speed of technology adoption and AI implementation makes training and resilience programs even more urgent, according to Joe Ranzau, business consulting partner for Grant Thornton. “People need to be prepared to explore new technology — and also to question tech outputs, if they’re going to be the human in the loop,” he said.
2. Cutting costs without increasing risks. Two-thirds (69%) of high-efficiency companies, but just 26% of the others, often factor redundancy and flexibility into their cost-cutting programs.
While cost reductions are a primary reason for automation investments, implementing technology has the potential to damage resilience, Grant Thornton noted.
3. Enabling third-party risk visibility. Almost half (46%) of the high-efficiency companies but just 17% of the others expressed confidence in this area, indicating stronger oversight and risk management practices.
4. Treating compliance as a strategic priority. Two-thirds (67%) of the higher-efficiency companies and 38% of the others treat compliance as a strategic priority, embedding it into leadership decisions, planning and governance frameworks.
5. Allocating appropriate resources and focusing on resilience efforts. Grant Thornton found that 33% of companies in the survey are at least slightly underinvested in resilience initiatives. And about one-fourth of them spend less than 2% of their overall budget on such initiatives.
