Quarterly Resiliency Forecast-Summer 2024

Strategic Risk Planning: Building a Resilient and Prepared Organization

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, risk planning is essential for every organization aiming to maintain operational continuity and achieve long-term success. Proactive planning, resource optimization, and regulatory compliance are pivotal components of effective risk management.

Benefits of Assessing Your Risk:

  • Proactive Planning: Proactive planning allows organizations to foresee and mitigate risks before they escalate. By anticipating challenges, businesses can implement preventive measures, ensuring minimal operational disruption. This approach enhances resilience and agility, enabling companies to adapt quickly and maintain their competitive edge.

  • Resource Optimization: Effective risk planning prioritizes resource allocation to protect critical business functions. Organizations can maximize efficiency, prevent wastage, and ensure operational continuity by focusing on high-priority areas. This targeted allocation supports informed decision-making and overall productivity.

  • Minimizing Financial Impact: Understanding potential risks allows organizations to develop strategies that minimize financial losses. Risk assessments identify areas of significant cost, enabling the implementation of contingency plans and safeguards. This proactive approach protects financial stability and boosts investor confidence.

  • Enhancing Stakeholder Confidence: Thorough risk assessments demonstrate a commitment to resilience and reliability, boosting confidence among customers, investors, and employees. Transparent risk management builds stronger stakeholder relationships, increases loyalty, attracts investors, and improves employee morale.

  • Regulatory Compliance: Risk planning ensures compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, avoiding penalties and aligning with industry best practices. Maintaining up-to-date compliance records facilitates smoother audits, reduces regulatory breaches, and protects the organization’s reputation and market position. 

The Risk Assessment Process: A Step-by-Step Approach

As outlined in the Good Practice Guidelines, the risk assessment process involves several key steps to identify, analyze, and evaluate risks to an organization. These steps include:

1. List Known and Anticipated Threats: Compile a comprehensive list of internal and external threats, including both previously identified and hypothetical risks.

2. Estimate the Impact of Each Threat: Assess the potential consequences of each threat materializing, considering aspects such as financial loss, reputational damage, and operational disruption.

3. Determine the Probability of Disruption for Each Threat: Evaluate the likelihood of each threat leading to a disruption, analyzing historical data, industry trends, and available intelligence.

4. Calculate a Risk Score for Each Threat: Combine the impact and probability scores to assign an overall risk score, quantifying the level of risk associated with each threat.

5. Prioritize the Threats Based on the Risk Score: Organize threats in order of significance, focusing on those with the highest risk scores to allocate resources and efforts effectively.

Risk planning is essential for modern business success. Proactive planning, resource optimization, financial risk minimization, stakeholder confidence, and regulatory compliance collectively protect operations and ensure sustainability. Conducting a thorough risk assessment is the first step toward building a resilient and reliable business.

Ready to start your risk planning journey? Visit the TRI Store and purchase our Risk and Hazard Assessment Guidebook to help you start. For a limited time only, the Guidebook is offered at $10 off.

The TRI Influence

Read President and CEO Andrea Davis’ interview with USA Today regarding international travel safety.

Read Director of Preparedness Faith Newton’s contribution to a recent BCC News article on the 2024 Hurricane Season and how businesses should prepare.

Watch President and CEO Andrea Davis’ presentation to the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center on Entrepreneurial Resilience: How to Prepare for the Unexpected.

Listen to COO Lorraine Schneider’s podcast interview for the Life Lessons from Pickleball series on how sports and mindfulness reinforce personal resiliency.

Welcome TRI’s new Planning Specialist Lorianne “Lori” Bundick, NEMAA

Please give a warm welcome to our new emergency management and business continuity planner, Lorianne “Lori” Bundick.

Lori has worked in the emergency management field for over five years in both the public and private sectors. She first became interested in the field while taking a CERT course. Her interest continued to grow when she had the opportunity to take some emergency management courses through UCLA Extension, where she discovered that the field blended with her interest in promoting personal and public safety and preparedness. Not long after, she joined the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) at UCLA. 

At UCLA’s OEM, she participated in/facilitated various emergency preparedness trainings, updated emergency plans, and responded to events affecting UCLA’s campus, ranging from fires, demonstrations, and COVID.  She has also spent time at a consulting firm, where she assisted a wide range of clients with their emergency management and/or business continuity concerns/needs. 

Recent Blog Posts  

April 2024: The Imperative of Prioritizing Accessibility and Inclusion in Emergency Management Consulting

May 2024: Tornado Reality Check: An Emergency Manager's Personal Experience and Preparedness Insights

About TRI 

The Resiliency Initiative (TRI) is a certified Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and Women Business Enterprise (WBE) with Fortune 500, government, military, and non-profit leadership experience focusing on crisis and risk mitigation planning.

The TRI team has over 200 cumulative years of experience in crisis management, business continuity, and security. The team has responded to and supported the recovery efforts of some of the US’ largest disasters, from the Northridge Earthquake, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2023 Maui fires.

TRI specializes in developing crisis and business continuity plans, employee and executive trainings, and engaging discussion-based, functional, and full-scale exercises. 

TRI’s mission is to create resilient communities around the world. We accomplish this by providing our expert services to businesses, non-profits, and communities. 

To request a free consultation, email info@theresiliencyinitiative.com or call +1 (424) 478-0779.

Andrea E. Davis

As the Founder, President and CEO of The Resiliency Initiative, a certified Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB), I empower small businesses and communities to become self-reliant through crisis and risk mitigation planning. I have over 20 years of experience in emergency management, business continuity, and public health, working for public, private, and non-profit sectors across various industries and geographies.

My core competencies include strategic policy development, program management, stakeholder engagement, and media relations. I have led global, enterprise-wide crisis management departments for multi-national, Fortune 500 companies, such as The Walt Disney Company and Walmart, overseeing large-scale responses to natural disasters, pandemics, cyberattacks, and social unrest. I have also served as the External Affairs Director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Louisiana Recovery Office for Hurricane Katrina, managing a recovery portfolio of over $25 billion.

My passion is volunteer service, which led to my selection as the Inaugural Emergency Manager of the Year in 2018 by the International Association of Emergency Managers and my induction into the Women’s Emergency Management Hall of Fame in 2013. Currently, I am Board Chair for the California Resiliency Alliance and the Northwest Arkansas American Red Cross. Additionally, I am an advisory board member for the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management (I-DIEM) and the Dr. Lucy Jones Foundation.

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TRI’s CEO, Andrea Davis, published in Cyber Defense Magazine.