Businesses must plan for unforeseeable events

Businesses are on the cusp of reopening after what owners hope was the last sustained lockdown period due to the global pandemic.

But some companies that were forced to shutter operations will never re-open again. For them, covid19 has been fatal.

The pandemic is hardly over but going forward lessons must be learned from the experience, with its tragic human losses and its dire economic consequences. All of the talk of the “new normal” must not be just talk. It must relate to the way businesses operate, including the provisions made to plan for the future.

If there is one thing all must take away from the covid19 experience is the need for continuity management.

Business continuity management involves identifying threats to a business’s assets and functions, assessing all risks, prioritisation of each risk based on their possible impact and developing robust risk management strategies to ensure continuity. It involves a laser-sharp review of an organisation’s operations, enabling effective management of the unexpected.

“If it’s not covid19, it’s going to be the impact of climate change,” American Chamber of Commerce of TT president Patricia Ghany said earlier this year. “The point is, if we are going to survive, we must make business continuity planning part of our long-term strategic vision.”

“Setting up such a plan should part of every company’s strategic planning process,” notes the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. “Having (or not having) an emergency and recovery plan could very well determine the life or death of a business.”

The need for this type of thinking is brought home by the timing of the current reopening exercise. In addition to dealing with the current global situation, companies should prepare for the hurricane season and for almost any eventuality that may come their way in the future. They cannot afford to lose any more time, customers, markets, opportunities or money.

We are in the thick of the rainy and hurricane seasons. Global weather patterns are changing, the world is witnessing more extreme events (volcanic eruptions, heatwaves, droughts, rising sea levels, coastal erosion.) Last week, the country endured flooding and some damage from adverse weather.

Forty to 60 per cent of businesses never reopen following a major disruption, according to the US Federal Emergency Management Agency. It is likely local numbers will be just as high once the dust settles after all of these events.

Businesses must therefore develop a culture in which they abandon old assumptions about the operating environment.

Before 2020, many would have laughed off the suggestion that a global pandemic would wreak with the world in the way that it has. While some might have foreseen the possibility, fewer would have actually put plans in place to ensure that they would have a roadmap of operations before, during and after such a crisis.

Not only must we all continue to operate in a manner that minimises the risks associated with possible further waves of deadly viruses – businesses must maintain covid19 protocols – but companies need to devise plans to become nimble in the event of some pressing future need. Failure to do so is to invite sudden death.