Business continuity — the next competitive advantage

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

Those businesses that had robust business continuity plans in place before the pandemic fared much better than those that didn’t.

Have we learned our lessons?

From here on in we are going to experience disruption on an unprecedented scale. Our next major global challenge is here.

Extreme weather events have impacted the US, UK, Belgium, Germany, China and New Zealand this past week, impacting mobility severely.

Below is a graphic display of another searing heatwave predicted for large parts of the US this week.

“It’s been a severe and dangerous summer, some of the heatwaves have been devastatingly hot. We certainly expected these type of temperatures as global warming continues but I don’t think anyone anticipated they would be so hot right now. I don’t think we could’ve expected so many heatwaves in the same general region in one summer.”— Michael Wehner, senior scientist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

US set for punishing temperatures as huge ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

Disruption will arrive on two fronts:

1) The impact of severe weather events
2) The impact of mitigation to limit further global heating

What do your business continuity plans look like in the face of these?

Businesses that actively work at decoupling from the need to burn fossil fuels and become location independent are going to prove to be more resilient than those who don’t.

How far are you down this track?