Continuity Central: 9th Annual Event Impact Management Study finds increased executive involvement in incident management
Published: Wednesday, 05 May 2021 08:48
BC Management’s 9th Annual Event Impact Management Study has been published. This year’s study was supported by Witt O’Brien’s LLC and assessed how organizations prepare for events and how those events impacted organizations during 2020.
One key discovery from the survey carried out for the report was the increased involvement of executive leadership in incident management. In 89 percent of organizations executive leadership was involved in ‘pandemic/disease’ response. Other areas of involvement were ‘cyberspace attack’ (38 percent - up from 25 percent); ‘health/safety issues’ (33 percent); and ‘protest’ (33 percent - up from 19 percent). According to respondents, these same events resulted in the most significant estimated financial loss and the greatest impact on employees.
Other key findings in the study include:
- 53 percent of organizations with ‘mature’ and ‘very mature’ programs indicated they have an integrated, holistic program equally focused on business continuity, crisis management, and crisis communications.
- 6 percent of respondents noted $10M+ in estimated financial losses, and, of those, 50 percent of business continuity programs were developed less than four years ago, while 60 percent never exercised business continuity plans.
- 44 percent of respondents have only 1 to 2 dedicated, internal program personnel.
- 58 percent are developing end-to-end program reviews/refreshes of their resiliency programs.
The pandemic consumed organizations with the longest business resumption period (average of 206 days) and presented the highest impact to critical processes (36 percent indicated more than 75 percent of critical processes were impacted.)
Read the report (PDF).