Business resilience in Daventry

On 14th November 2013, businesses based in the Daventry area had the opportunity to share experiences, learn from each other and expert speakers, with the aim of increasing their resilience to severe weather and climate change. Climate East Midlands worked with Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership to deliver the event, and invited speakers from Northamptonshire County Council, the Environment Agency and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).

Around 15 businesses attended, from sectors including food, logistics, construction, office supplies, energy supply and healthcare. Useful discussion took place, especially during the exercise to explore severe weather impacts on different business areas e.g. staff, operations, premises etc.

A case study about Plantool Ltd's Kettering depot, which was flooded in 2007, was shared with participants. This case study will be published shortly, and highlights the benefits of increasing resilience to severe weather, including reduced disruption, reduced costs, enhanced reputation, and the opportunity to help others, which can be an opportunity to gain new customers.

Issues that emerged in the discussion, where participants shared their experiences and ideas, included:

• the need to test business continuity plans
• the need to persuade colleagues of the importance of business continuity planning
• incentivising staff to come into work during severe weather events
• staged evacuation of large sites, and the importance of coordinating this with neighbouring businesses to avoid gridlock
• buddying up with other local businesses, or businesses producing similar products
• flexible working and working from home are not possible for some staff, and during severe winter weather volunteers with 4x4 vehicles have been called upon to ferry e.g. doctors and nurses to and from work
• managing the media during a severe weather event can be challenging, so media training for key staff could be worthwhile
• the information that people turn to during an emergency needs to be short and accessible, not buried in books and folders

Participants were encouraged to use a free online tool, called the Business Resilience Health Check. This tool consists of a multiple choice questionnaire and produces a prioritised action plan tailored for your business. Previous workshop participants have found the action plan useful for assessing where their organisation needs to focus to increase its resilience, and it can help to raise the issues with senior management. Access the Business Resilience Health Check tool here: www.businessresiliencehealthcheck.co.uk

Climate East Midlands has published a short guide for businesses called "Weathering the Storm: Saving and Making Money in a Changing Climate". Download Weathering the Storm here. Copies of this guide were given out to workshop participants.

The workshop venue was The Granary Hotel, Fawsley, which happens to have experienced flooding in the past. They are currently carrying out work to reduce flood risk, and a case study will follow shortly.

100% of the workshop participants rated the workshop as good or excellent. Below are some quotes from the evaluation forms:

Which parts of this workshop were particularly useful to you?

• "Business Resilience Health Check. Networking - meeting new colleagues."
• "Case studies, working [in] groups and hearing stories, challenges and incentives."
• "Flood warning. Learnings from presenters and other attendees."
• "Risk and opportunities desk exercise. Useful websites and resources."
• "Looking at all aspects and impacts of how a business can be affected."
• "Being made aware of resources available e.g. EA flood planning and CEM assessment tool."
• "IOSH presentation. Networking with different types of businesses, hearing their stories."
• "Understanding more information is available through the council."

How will you act on what you have learnt?

• "Checking locality of sites with the potential for flooding."
• "Prepare a revised [business continuity] plan and discuss and communicate staff policy with HR."
• "Want to talk to management about testing [our business continuity plan]."
• "Visit EA website and and register with Flood Warning/ Floodline. Revisit severe weather (floods and snow)."
• "Revisit business continuity plan to check robustness."
• "Review crisis file. Raise awareness. Scenario exercise with managers to see how prepared they are for each scenario. Implement staff incentives to minimise risk to production levels. Do Business Resilience Health Check."

For more information please contact [email protected]

Coming up...

The next business resilience workshop in Northamptonshire will be held on Tuesday 28th January 2014, in Corby. Download the flyer here. To book your free place, please contact [email protected]