Answering the Top 5 Questions Asked About Business Resiliency

As part of SSON’s quest to help shared services professionals excel at their organizations, we are answering some of the top questions professionals have about business resiliency.

If you are interested in learning more about the GBS framework, make sure you read our recently published “Beginner’s Guide to Global Business Services (GBS)”. 

1. What is business resiliency? 

According to the SSON Glossary, business resiliency is a business's ability to adapt to new, unpredictable circumstances through a framework of continuous improvement. Meaning, despite external challenges, businesses are continuing to improve products, services, or processes for their customers. 

2. Why is business resilience important? 

When the COVID-19 pandemic first began to sweep the world in 2020, business as we know it changed. Employees were forced to adjust to a new work model, supply chain issues caused problems for just about every industry. Even more recently, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the great resignation, and concerns of a looming recession are posing even more relevant challenges. These modern dilemmas have forced businesses of all shapes and sizes to revisit their operating model, location strategy, and business resiliency plans.

When an organization has established a strong business resiliency plan, it allows them to adapt to any new challenge or disruption, continue operations, and safeguard people, assets, and processes. Beyond having a plan, businesses with cultures of resilience will be agile enough to respond to whatever the future may hold.

3. How do I know if my business is staying resilient?

There are several ways for a business to assess how resilient they are amidst critical events. These indicators can show either physical business resilience, or cultural resilience, but regardless, they are important measurement strategies.

Before gauging your business's resilience, it is important to understand your standard operating procedures and response plans, the technology and systems you utilize, and the governance structures within the organization. Once you have a proper understanding of these elements, you can begin the process of evaluating your resiliency.

Some of the ways you can tell if your business is staying resilient include:

• The ability to identify and assess the risks to your operation 
• The ability to identify the employees and processes that could potentially be in harm's way 
• Being able to act on standard operating procedures and protocols 
• Being able to analyze your organization's performance before, and after, the critical event 

When assessing how your business showed cultural resilience, it’s important to ask questions such as: 

• Where did your teams achieve/underachieve in the critical moment? 
• In what areas were your teams blindsided? 
• What aspects of your company culture struggled amidst the critical challenge? Where does governance need to improve to strengthen the company culture? 

4. How important is employee well-being for business resiliency?

Sir Richard Branson once said “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” and a similar thing can be said for business resiliency.

When the pandemic began, mental health became a very important topic in HR circles. Businesses needed to develop methods that would show their employees they came first, and many responded appropriately. According to SSON Analytics “GBS and Shared Services State of Industry Survey 2022”, 51% of businesses began giving their employees more control over their schedules, and 27% began providing mental health/wellness support services. 

These solutions provide employees with pathways to stay resilient during an incredibly challenging time, and when your employees are able to be resilient, they’re less prone to burnout. 

5. Why is culture building important for business resiliency in a hybrid work setting? 

As mentioned in the previous question, businesses ensured their employees stayed resilient throughout Covid by giving them control of their schedules and offering mental health services. However, another important part of remaining resilient is ensuring there is a strong corporate culture even when employees can’t meet face-to-face.

Some ways businesses can ensure a strong culture remains in a hybrid workforce include: 

• Making employee safety the top priority 
• Provide inclusivity whether employees are in-person or remote 
• Continuous adaptability and flexibility 
• Smart technology investments 

Some of these solutions, such as safety and inclusivity, focus more on keeping employees resilient by giving them support services. Meanwhile, flexibility and smart technologies ensure that collaboration is accessible and teams can communicate how to continuously improve.

Still have more questions about business resiliency? Feel free to send them to info@ssonetwork.com and we will try to address them in part 2!