Benchmark Resilience: A web-based tool for measuring and benchmarking your organisation’s resilience!

Resilience: the ability of an organisation to survive and even thrive through times of crisis.

Why measure and benchmark resilience?

Resilience can be an asset to your organisation and to its stakeholders. The current global financial crisis is just one example of when an organisation needs to be resilient to survive. Organisations, both big and small, are also susceptible to power cuts, data corruption, loss of key staff or reputation, property damage, public health issues like pandemic influenza or a natural hazard event like a volcanic eruption or weather bomb. And it’s not just the big problems that can cause trouble for organisations; many experience small disruptions on a daily basis. How would your organisation cope if you experienced the level of disruption that you normally see in one month, in the space of one day?

A resilient organisation is one that not only survives, but is able to thrive in an environment of change and uncertainty.

Despite the many business benefits of becoming more resilient, organisations often struggle to prioritise resilience and to link resilience with the ability to operate effectively and efficiently during business as usual. Measuring and benchmarking organisational resilience is about three things:

Asking ‘as an organisation how resilient are we and what do we need to work on?’
Comparing how resilient your organisation is against others of a similar size or sector.
Providing a simple tool for tracking how resilient your organisation is over time - remembering that what gets measured gets done!

What are the benefits of using the Benchmark Resilient tool?

The Benchmark Resilience tool is a web-based tool which organisations can use, not only to measure, but also to compare resilience. Participation in this research means the tool is free to use, and it can provide some interesting and useful results. Despite being in its early stages, the tool can still offer many real benefits to organisations that participate, these include:

raising awareness of resilience issues in your organisation
providing a starting point for developing your organisation's business case for resilience

The Benchmark Resilience Results Report which will:

Provide a numerical and visual snapshot your organisation's resilience
Tell you how your organisation’s resilience compares with other organisations in Auckland
Tell you how your organisation’s resilience compares with other organisations in your sector (where available)
Summarise your organisation’s resilience based on independent indicators, including which areas of resilience your organisation is good at and which could be improved
Discuss your organisation’s strongest and weakest areas of resilience, and ways to improve these areas

How do you participate?

The web-based tool requires as many of your management and non-management staff as possible (including the most senior manager at your organisation’s Auckland site) to answer a series of questions to measure your organisation’s resilience. An email containing the weblink will be sent to you for forwarding to all of your staff. The questionnaire will take around 20 minutes to complete.

Are your results confidential?

Yes, your organisation will not be individually identified in any report other than the one that your organisation receives. Individual staff members who use the tool will not be identified in any way.

When will you get the results?

Participating organisations will be given interim results in June 2009. This consists of a 1-2 page summary of your organisation’s strongest and weakest resilience characteristics. Final result reports will be delivered to organisations in November 2009.

Who is involved with the Benchmark Resilience project?

The project is being conducted as Ph.D. research at the University of Canterbury by Amy Stephenson. It is funded by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Auckland Civil Defence and Emergency Management Group. Organisations are part of the network that help New Zealanders to plan for, respond to, and recover from crisis. Auckland, as part of the powerhouse of the New Zealand economy, was identified as a critical region to achieving greater resilience for the New Zealand community.

How do you register to participate?

If you would like to participate in the project to measure and benchmark your organisations resilience, please contact Amy Stephenson, providing in the email your organisation's name, contact email address and phone number.