Organisational Resilience Guidance issued for UK Government departments

In essence, the guidelines propose a common approach towards increasing organisational resilience in Government. They draw on established guidance, recognised good practices from both the public and private sectors and relevant British Standards (issued by the British Standards Institution) and International Standards published by the International Standards Organisation, duly outlining a framework of guiding principles, practices and cultural attributes for consideration.

Even though they are aimed at UK Government departments, according to the BCI these guidelines contain information that can benefit public and private sector business continuity practitioners worldwide.

However, as is often the case with Government guidelines, they are non-mandatory. This is a frequent criticism from resilience practitioners. Indeed, BCI research backs this up. The BCI’s Operational Resilience Report 2024 shows that an absence of laws and regulations are the main reasons for not having a resilience programme in place.

During interviews that underpinned the document’s contents, practitioners discussed how mandatory regulations can drive more buy-in from senior management and increase investment. While valuable from the point of view of its content, optional guidance can be ignored by management who may well have pressing spending priorities elsewhere.

That said, the BCI is of the view that these new Government guidelines offer a strong framework and a common approach for practitioners keen to implement good practice.

Guiding principles

The guidelines include recommended guiding principles of overarching considerations, which should inform Government departments’ decision-making. They include principles such as: “Risk-based – while departments should have a general ability to respond and recover from unexpected events and the common consequences of ‘bundles’ of risks, they should also prepare for specific risks with horizon scanning, contingency planning and the validation of their risk-specific arrangements.”

Other suggested guiding principles include ensuring resilience arrangements reflect departmental objectives and designing resilience arrangements that absolutely reflect the established design principles of redundancy, diversity, modularity and adaptability.

In addition to the principles, the guidelines also provide practical guidance on embedding practises into an organisation’s structure, such as enabling clear oversight and accountability for risk management and resilience capabilities, assessing risk and impacts and also considering relevant ways in which to reduce risks in line with risk appetite.

Cultural attributes

A clear set of cultural attributes is recommended, including leadership promotion and visibility demonstrating the latter’s commitment to resilience, psychological safety (whereby staff feel enabled to speak up and freely share risk information) and a culture that engages with failure to strengthen its future resilience.

With some practitioners rightly admitting that resilience cannot be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for organisations, it’s “refreshing” (asserts the BCI) to see these guidelines including a caveat explaining they are to be used to refine an organisation’s own approach to resilience, underlining the understanding that all organisations are different.

The guidelines state that they are: “A set of handrails for [Government] departments to use in defining and refining their own approach to organisational resilience. Resilience is neither static nor absolute and what works well in one context may have less relevance or impact elsewhere.”

In order to support organisational planning, resilience practitioners across the globe could take note of the recommendations in these guidelines, add parts to their own ‘resilience toolbox’ and seek to apply them where appropriate to enhance and raise awareness of their own resilience programmes.

Even though they are non-regulatory and aimed at UK Government departments, the guidelines contain practical advice – so too a common framework – that can be tailored to suit all types of organisations.

*View Organisational Resilience Guidance for UK Government Departments, Agencies and Arm’s Length Bodies online