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Resilience is more than just a goal that organizations strive to achieve. With an increased number of critical events, including cyber-attacks, extreme weather and violent crime, resilience is vital for the short-term and long-term success of any operation. Everbridge and Atos sought out to find the links between resilience and success, with a report from Dr. Stefan Vieweg, Director of the Institute for Compliance and Corporate Governance (ICC) at the Rheinische Fachhochschule in Cologne, Germany.
The study comprised responses from 226 businesses across Europe, with a range of employees anywhere from under 3,000 to over 100,000, and across numerous industries. Our most recent blog discussed the importance of resilience and the steps organizations can take to achieve their goals. Dr. Vieweg’s research identified seven key aspects of resilience:
- Resilience has a significant impact on the bottom line.
- Money is not everything in resilience.
- Talking is easier than execution.
- There is a reason for resilience among top performers.
- An excess of spending does not necessarily help.
- There is a sweet spot of resilience investment.
- Digitalization and automation matter.
These seven findings can serve as the guide for organizations to assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and map out the policies and procedures they need to implement to improve their resilience.
1. Resilience has a significant impact on the bottom line
Prioritizing resilience means taking proactive measures to reduce the impact of critical events and recover quickly. Resilience directly affects financial stability, and the data tells the whole story. The most resilient companies suffered only a 7% loss in annual sales revenue due to critical events, compared to 145% of annual sales revenue for underperforming companies. The difference is 20x greater losses.
2. Money is not everything in resilience
According to Vieweg’s research, organizations of all sizes showed a similar trend: underperforming companies almost always spent more on risk and resilience measures than the top performing ones. The biggest reason for this is the cost savings of a unified, automated solution compared to putting out fires with disparate systems each time a new critical event occurs.
The top performing companies spent an average of 10% of revenue per year on resilience, but the least resilient companies spent over 18%. Rather than spending on piecemeal solutions or spending as critical events occur, investing in integrated, automated solutions pays off financially and in terms of greater preparedness.
3. There is a sweet spot of resilience investment
That leads to another constant, which is that the optimal financial commitment is between 10-25% of revenue. Companies in this range allowed approximately 30% damage aversion, with companies under 50,000 employees performing slightly better. Spending more is not as important as spending wisely, namely with digitization and automation.
4. An excess of spending does not significantly help
While investing in resilience is critical to success, Vieweg’s research found that spending beyond 25% of annual revenue on resilience has diminishing returns. Organizations need to make careful plans for future investments to maximize return on investment.
Similar to the reasoning in the finding that money is not everything in resilience, some decision makers may feel that spending on specific solutions to solve for risk management, digital security, employee communication, and other aspects of resilience is beneficial, when in reality, investing in one platform that provides an integrated solution for organizational resilience will save time, effort, and money.
5. Digitization and automation matter
Dr. Vieweg’s research found a direct positive correlation between the degree of digitalization and preparedness for a critical event, particularly in terms of identifying risks. Among the top performing organizations, 46% have an early-warning system established, but only 29% of those surveyed reported very high levels of automation across processes.
Dr. Vieweg concluded that there is a significant potential to improve resilience across organizations of all sizes with automated, integrated risk management processes.
6. Talking is easier than execution
Over 60% of the organizations in the study acknowledged that critical events have become more frequent, more unpredictable, and have had a larger impact. But less than 50% have explicit resilience goals operationalized.
While Vieweg’s research showed that top performing companies consider and follow through on specific goals more often than lower performing organizations, there is still an industry-wide need for growth, particularly when it comes to developing risk and resilience strategies.
7. There is a reason for resilience among top performers
The most resilient organizations not only implemented resilience measures and risk management solutions at a higher pace than others, but these methods proved effective, were used continuously, and introduced avenues of mitigation. Over 50% of the top performers have an established risk management process.
Overall, Dr. Vieweg’s findings show that organizations who take a proactive, consistent approach to meeting established resilience goals are among the most successful. Even still, most organizations have potential for improvement in terms of digitalization and automation, and he concluded that digitalization would pay off quickly for all businesses. To learn more about these seven findings and read further analysis from the study, download our eBook “The Research Behind Resilience: Why Prioritizing and Investing in Resilience Matters.”
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Skilled nursing and long-term care facilities are among the hardest hit by COVID-19, reporting a high rate of cases that have resulted in one-fifth of fatalities nationwide.
Read how these facilities are working to create a strong surveillance and response system while meeting new CMS reporting requirements in our new guide.
Critical events are typically times of heightened stress. But they don’t need to be times of turmoil. Using Everbridge’s Critical Event Management software you can gain better visibility, more management control, and reduce costs and disruptions.
In this brochure, learn how Everbridge’s Critical Event Management (CEM) software suite provides one cohesive platform for managing a full range of critical events.
The occurrence of workplace violence for healthcare workers is nearly 4 times higher than other industries. In fact, according to a survey conducted by the American Nurses Association, nurses are particularly vulnerable to workplace violence, with 21% of nurses reporting having been physically assaulted in the last 12 months and over 50% reported being verbally abused. The majority of these incidents (80%) are caused by patients. 
The Joint Commission has been following this troubling trajectory and in 2010, it issued a Sentinel Alert due to the increased reports of assault, rape, and homicide. Based on further data in the Sentinel Database, it listed the following top-noted contributing factors in reports of violence:
• 62% noted leadership factors, most notable problems in the areas of policy and procedure development and implementation.
• 60% of reported noted human resources-related factors such as the increased need for staff education and competency assessment processes.
• 58% noted patient assessment issues, particularly in the areas of flawed patient observation protocols, inadequate assessment tools, and lack of psychiatric assessment.
• 53% noted communication failures, both among staff and with patients and family.
• 36% noted physical environment, in terms of deficiencies in general safety of the environment and security procedures and practices.
In addition to the direct physical impact on nursing staff including medical costs, and lost days at work, workplace violence can lead to staff dissatisfaction and likelihood to quit (32% of nurses who are assaulted are likely to leave the healthcare organization). On average, the cost of replacing a nurse is $27,000 to $103,000, including separation, recruiting, hiring, orientation, and training. The Joint Commission requires healthcare facilities to address and maintain a written plan on how the hospital provides for the security of patients, staff, and visitors. So, what can you do to reduce the likelihood of workplace violence for your staff.
1. Develop and enforce comprehensive policies and procedures against workplace violence.
• Evaluate objective measures of violence to identify risks and risk levels.
• Establish a comprehensive workplace violence prevention program.
• Ensure that the violence prevention program addresses the possibility of gun violence, including active shooters.
2. Train staff to recognize the warning signs of violent behavior and respond proactively.
• Encourage all employees and other staff to report incidents of violence or any perceived threats of violence.
• Ensure staff have multiple tools of alerting officials to report violent or threatening behavior – “See Something, Say Something.”
3. Establish a secure environment including physical (locks, etc..) and electronic (including monitoring, access controls, etc..) measures.
4. Ensure appropriate follow-up to violent events, including communication, post-incident support, and investigation.
Learn best practices for preventing and managing workplace violence on our Featured Topic Page on Workplace Violence and by accessing our latest resources including:
• Keeping Healthcare Workers Safe: Communication Guidelines for Lone and Remote Healthcare Staff
• Preventing Workplace Violence: Legal Issues and Operational Risk Management
Everbridge is trusted by more than 1,100 of the country’s leading hospitals to keep people safe, and operations running. To learn how the Everbridge Critical Event Management platform is used every day in hospitals to communicate the right information at the right time to reduce the risk of events such as active shooter or workplace violence, visit www.everbridge.com/healthcare.