As the COVID-19 pandemic takes its toll on business operations, it is crucial that business leaders become resilient to change and incorporate workplace recovery planning into their strategy. Chris Butler, Lead Principal Consultant, Resilience and Security at Sungard AS, explores how business leaders can learn from the past year and the disruption caused by the pandemic in order to improve their workplace recovery planning.
Across the UK, offices, pubs, restaurants and gyms remain closed and the bulk of operations for many organisations across the country continue to be carried out remotely. Continuing to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, and its aftermath, remains one of the biggest business challenges of the decade.
Following the first lockdown, Sungard AS commissioned IDC to conduct an independent research study into workplace recovery and the associated motivations, challenges and priorities. The findings show that most organisations have a partial Disaster Recovery (DR) plan in place, but far too many have no plan whatsoever.
Last year has shown both the need for, and previous gaps in, Business Continuity (BC) and DR planning within a variety of industries. BC planning provides a framework to deal with complex situations, to allow organisations to function with as little disruption as possible. The first lockdown in Spring came as a surprise to many companies, the second less so. Resilience planning lessons from the first lockdown should be identified and implemented to improve workplace recovery options for an uncertain future.
The pandemic exposed the preparedness weakness of many companies. Fewer than half (48.4%) of all applications are protected by a Disaster Recovery plan and unfortunately, when it comes to workplace recovery and pandemic planning, the situation appears even worse. Only 17.4% of organisations had planned for workforce contingencies covering more than 20% of their respective workforces. This barely starts to cover the number of employees who have been impacted by the pandemic.
Taking into account the customary Business Continuity disruptions, how can business leaders use pandemic learnings to improve their workplace recovery planning?
Are businesses learning from the first lockdown?
From the survey, IDC found that three-quarters (75%) of organisations can be considered unprepared for a significant organisational disruption. Pandemic planning is a necessity and few organisations have formalised it.
The first lockdown in the UK exposed the preparedness weakness of many companies. Those with workplace recovery plans typically had considered only 5–15% of their workforce (deemed critical), whereas the pandemic affected the majority.
Most organisations moved quickly to a Working from Home (WFH) posture, as government guidance required people to do so wherever possible. Not all companies achieved this seamlessly. WFH limitations were quickly exposed and included: employee collaboration was initially limited or hampered; use of personal devices – whether PC or tablet – increased, challenging device management and security controls in IT teams; extensive emergency purchases of IT hardware; and home networks did not meet corporate standards for security, creating vulnerabilities and increasing the attack surface into corporate systems.
Companies need to define their cybersecurity ‘new normal’, which should see flexible and adaptable solutions, such as software-defined perimeters replacing older, more vulnerable technologies such as VPNs. The future dispersed way of working implies less control for IT security teams as their companies use more cloud-based services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) from major outsourced vendors.
The positive news is that organisations seem to recognise the need for greater preparedness – 66% of organisations plan to spend more on BC and 61% plan more on workplace recovery over the next 24 months. This is a positive sign, but organisations need to act decisively.
A quarter of organisations expect to increase the use of third-party workplace recovery facilities in the future and 22% expect to increase the use of dedicated/reserved seats in third-party workplace recovery facilities. Investment in infrastructure is also key, with 92% of business leaders planning to invest in better video/voice systems and 91% are investing in better collaboration tools.
The pandemic has caused leaders to take action to improve their organisation’s response to the crisis, and these investments will be vital to improving workplace recovery during future disruptions. So far, the signs are positive and businesses intend to use the pandemic lessons to improve their resilience.
The risks of going fully remote
The increased working from home model, encouraged by government policy, has certainly proved challenging for most.
Many organisations have worked hard to improve working from home capabilities and some have looked beyond corporate IT devices to aspects of health and safety. However, the rapid procurement of unplanned IT hardware runs the risk of purchasing equipment that will still require ongoing maintenance, upgrades and patching, whether they are inside or outside the enterprise IT network.
With the possibility of future restrictions on office working, organisations need to weigh the cost of a range of options to keep the business going. There will be a trade-off in split-site working, which would see staff working across multiple office locations and those who will be required to work from home. There are benefits and costs in this model, and serviced office workspace, whether for normal operations or recovery, will certainly play a part for those teams for whom WFH is not an option. The cost of on-demand third-party recovery facility subscriptions where the vendor is responsible for keeping the infrastructure up to date will have to be carefully considered.
Organisations must lead from the top for effective workplace recovery planning
The overall reason for workplace recovery planning is simply to keep the business running as close to normal as possible and minimise disruption to the customer.
Organisations that are unable to resume normal operations in a timely manner or unable to sustain prolonged recoveries in every aspect of the organisation risk the direct loss of revenue, permanent loss of customers, loss of organisational reputation and more.
For the most effective workplace recovery planning, organisations should begin with senior executive sponsorship – Business Continuity is an enterprise-wide collaboration in the support of organisational needs. Executive involvement ensures that the programme receives adequate funding to accomplish the necessary goals.
As organisational leaders explore workplace recovery planning, they should prioritise answering the following four questions:
- Can the organisation recover critical business functions in a way to meet customer requirements and conduct business as normal, or as close to normal as possible in a timely manner?
- What is the impact of business disruptions on revenue, employees and customers?
- Will current BC, DR and workplace recovery plans not only meet business requirements but also provide competitive advantage?
- Are the plans both flexible enough to adapt to various scenarios and cost-effective enough to be practical?
Future planning
Workplace recovery would benefit from a renewed focus in the field of resilience planning. It’s always good to have a plan. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the fact that all organisations can be affected by disruptions, often at short notice, sometimes from completely unexpected directions. Having a sound workplace recovery plan in place will help an organisation to reduce costs and adapt to disruptions, however and whenever they threaten business operations.
Businesses that build agility into their recovery planning stand a much better chance of not just surviving a disruption, but also gaining competitive advantage over peers that struggle to recover. Organisations need to incorporate BC, DR and workplace recovery planning in a more holistic and integrated approach to resilience, supported at the highest levels of the organisation.
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