McKinsey & Co, World renown strategic consultants, in their article ‘Resilience for sustainable, inclusive growth’, publishing online in June 2022 state that ‘resilience should be seen as the ability to deal with adversity, withstand shocks and continuously adapt and accelerate as disruptions and crises arise over time.’

Meanwhile, sleicest-consulting.org.uk has developed a slightly different definition: resilience has three aspects; protection, durability and healing power. Protection encompasses dealing with adversity and withstanding shocks. Durability is about wear and tear rates – resilience entities wear and tear slowly. Healing power is about recovering the functionality previously in place.

In our view, adapting and accelerating are features of business flexibility more generally and are of course also features of innovative organisations. Innovative organisations may or may not be resilient.

Why do definitions matter? Because to develop frameworks and measures, the definition is the foundation.

What might be some measures for business resilience?

Just considering at the HR resource alone, the protection aspect might involve measuring and monitoring; the number of conflict of interest, whistle blower, grievance events, project testing time and staff training hours (by department) per period.

The durability aspect might involve measuring and monitoring; sick leave rates, volumes of adverse appraisals per period, staff turnover rates and staff survey ratings of various criteria (morale indicators).

The healing power aspect might involve; recruitment success rates (fast and effective hires), volume of innovation projects delivered on time and on budget (by staff member as project manager).

Sleicest-consulting is available to help your HR staff improve its resilience reporting as part of the organisation’s KPI reporting suite generally.

Simon Leicester

SME Consultant