Business leaders overestimate preparedness for disruption: PwC Survey

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In the last two years, Organisations experienced three and a half disruptions on average. Three-quarters of respondents (76%) reported that their most serious disruption had a medium-to-high impact on operations, disrupting critical business processes and services and causing downstream financial and reputational issues.
Business leaders overestimate

Business leaders overestimate preparedness for disruption: PwC Survey

Under the PwC brand, PricewaterhouseCoopers, an international professional services firm, has a global presence. PwC is the world’s second-largest professional services network organisation and one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Deloitte, EY, and KPMG.

 

The firm conducts research and studies on new trends in finance, the market, the crisis, and other areas. The company recently conducted a survey on “Global Crisis and Resilience” from September to November 2022. The findings revealed that the arrival of the resilience revolution had a significant impact on the world.

 

Despite operating in a disruptive environment, organisations and business leaders overestimate their resilience, according to PwC’s biannual Global Crisis and Resilience Survey.

 

When asked where resilience ranks on the list of corporate priorities, nine out of ten (89%) respondents said it is one of their top strategic organisational priorities, indicating that organisations are instituting a resilience revolution.

 

Following a turbulent start to the decade, it is unsurprising that nine out of ten (91%) organisations have reported at least one disruption other than the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

In the last two years, organisations experienced three and a half disruptions on average. Three-quarters of respondents (76%) reported that their most serious disruption had a medium-to-high impact on operations, disrupting critical business processes and services and causing downstream financial and reputational issues.

 

The global COVID-19 pandemic, employee retention and recruitment, supply chain disruption or failure, technology disruption or failure, and cyberattack are the top five reported disruptions.

 

Excluding the pandemic, supply chain disruptions had the greatest financial and non-monetary impact on organisations, and they have more than doubled since 2019, according to the report. More than half (60%) of organisations were most concerned about experiencing a similar disruption again if their most serious disruption was supply chain-related.

 

While 70% of business leaders are confident in their ability to recover from various disruptions, survey results show that many organisations lack the foundational resilience elements required for success. This confidence gap exposes organisations to risk, especially when the disruption spotlight is solely on them rather than broader global or sector challenges.

 

The survey data revealed three major trends driving what PwC refers to as a resilience revolution:

Business leaders overestimate Integration: For today’s organisations, an integrated resilience programme is essential.

It is no longer sufficient for organisations to address today’s complex and interconnected risks in silos. Businesses are actively moving towards an integrated resilience approach, centrally governing and aligning multiple resilience capabilities around protecting what matters most, and embedding the programme into operations and corporate culture.

 

Business leaders overestimate Leadership: Thriving in a precrisis environment necessitates an executive leader and highly skilled teams.

A successful resilience strategy and programme require: (1) C-suite executive sponsorship; (2) a programme leader with clear responsibility; and (3) a skilled team to do the day-to-day work.

 

Business leaders overestimate Operational Resilience: It is critical to build operational resilience in the organisation around programme approaches.

Organisations must strengthen their operational resilience (OpRes) and ensure that enterprise planning and preparation are part of a larger, continuous cycle. Many businesses are adopting the core principles of an OpRes approach as they integrate their resilience programmes, focusing on protecting what matters most and prioritising investment based on what is critical to their organisation and stakeholders. This enables organisations to manage risks with high reliability while also increasing efficiency.

 

Those who have transitioned to an integrated resilience programme are significantly ahead in many core elements of OpRes, such as risk and threat assessment processes, exercising and testing, and service and process dependency mapping, allowing companies to build a robust corporate immune system that allows an organisation to adapt, flex, and move forward stronger.

 

According to the findings of PwC’s 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey, 1,812 business leaders from 42 countries and industries shared their observations between September and November 2022.

 

In this third study of PwC’s analyze the corporate crisis and resilience data from the respondents which identified as 41% are C-Suite, while 58% are non-C-Suite. Read the full-report here.

 

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