Preparing for crises, change and disruption

This Issue This is a part of the Resilience feature

By , and - , Build 192

From natural disasters and conflict to COVID-19, businesses everywhere have been forced to operate through incredibly challenging times. With disruption and change the new normal, we need to build a culture and capacity in our organisations so we are future ready.

Managing risk is part of business as usual in the construction sector. Health and safety, weather delays and material quality are just some of the risks that must be managed day to day on projects. We know these risks exist, and we can plan for them.

Planned vs adaptive business resilience

Increasingly, the sector is being disrupted by risks that cannot fully be planned or prepared for. Supply chain disruptions, workforce issues and economic recessions have all put pressure on the sector. These events have forced organisations to rapidly adapt in the face of significant uncertainty.

When building resilience in an organisation, you need to develop both planned and adaptive resilience:

  • Planned resilience is about good risk management – identify potential risks, mitigate the risks as far as possible and plan for how to deal with the risk should it eventuate.
  • Adaptive resilience is about building the capacity to deal with the unexpected – the unknown unknowns. This includes an organisational culture that embraces change, strong relationships to support you through disruptive periods, and business processes that are change ready.

Six tips to developing adaptive capacity and resilience

The following key tips for developing your business’s adaptive capacity and resilience fall into three areas:

  • Being intentional about building organisational culture by investing in leadership capability, keeping staff engaged and prioritising staff wellbeing.
  • Developing strong relationships and networks by collaborating for success and valuing your supply chain.
  • Being change ready by planning to adapt and being prepared.

1. Investing in leadership capability

Having good depth of leadership in your organisation is key to building resilience. Strong leadership provides good management and decision making during times of crisis.

Good leaders are also more likely to see potential risks ahead of time and position the organisation to proactively respond to disruption. Investing in leadership capabilities across your organisation, not just for those at the top, is critical for improving staff engagement and helping your organisation build capacity to face disruption.

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2. Keep staff engaged

Engaged employees are willing to go the extra mile for their organisation. Not only is this essential in times of crisis, it also has positive impacts on performance day to day.

Don’t just use words to engage staff – take practical actions and initiatives to allow staff to deepen their involvement in the organisation.

Examples include having a clear vision that staff feel connected to, sharing challenges and inviting staff to innovate and help solve problems, providing leadership opportunities, celebrating success and demonstrating gratitude and remaining authentic in your support.

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3. Take care of your staff – prioritise wellbeing

Healthy staff means a healthy organisation. Prioritising and supporting the individual and collective wellbeing of staff will improve their ability to cope with challenges and manage their outlook towards ongoing disruption and uncertainty.

Supporting wellbeing could include increasing autonomy, providing flexibility where possible and investment in mental health initiatives.

In a crisis, supporting wellbeing could include ensuring basic needs are met – for example, shelter, food and childcare – so staff can focus on doing their job. Proactively supporting staff wellbeing will better position your organisation to recover and be ready for the next disruption.

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4. Collaborate for success

Develop strong relationships and networks by collaborating for success and valuing your supply chain.

Many heads are better than one in a crisis, and interacting with other organisations, whether competitors, customers or business associations, can establish camaraderie and generate ideas.

Before a crisis, strong relationships with others within the industry can help you get early warning of potential disruption. Look around you and identify which relationships might help you get through disruption in the future. Who might be able to support you with resources, information and ideas? Who could you support? Building these relationships will pay dividends during business as usual as well.

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5. Value your supply chain

As most construction businesses would have experienced first-hand, disruptions to supply or logistics chains can have severe impacts on the ability to continue usual business operations. Strong relationships with supply chain partners can help to minimise future disruptions.

To improve supply chain resilience, build trusting reciprocal relationships with an organisationally and geographically diverse range of reputable suppliers. Open communication and flexibility between your organisation and suppliers will enhance information flow when disruption occurs. Build some fat into supply chain and procurement arrangements where possible to insulate the severity and longevity of disruptions.

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6. Plan to adapt and be prepared

Strange as it sounds, you can also build adaptive capacity into your planning processes. Business continuity planning in advance of disruptions can help expedite recovery and prioritise essential actions for continued operation of your business.

However, no matter how detailed a plan is, you will never be able to anticipate all potential circumstances that may arise. Improve your organisation’s adaptive capacity by:

  • outlining principles for supporting staff post-event
  • proactively investing in employee resilience
  • identifying and developing leadership across the entire organisation
  • using your plans to prompt consideration to post-disaster opportunities
  • building a culture of recording and acting upon lessons learned.

Adaptive business strategy

You can also take an adaptive planning approach to your business strategy.

Rather than building a single strategy and putting all your eggs in one basket, develop a suite of potential strategies that you can move between depending on what the future brings.

Identify potential triggers that might signal the need to move between strategies – for example, change in customer preferences or economic conditions. Make peace with the fact that you will have to adapt.

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Note

For further information on how to manage your organisation through crises, change and disruption, visit www.resorgs.org.nz/resources/.

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