Organizations have to consider a number of factors when it comes to keeping themselves and their employees safe. Severe weather, crime, economic and political unrest all pose risks to an organization. Some, such as severe weather and crime, increase the likelihood of exterior threats, while factors such as civil unrest may increase the risk of insider threats. 

OnSolve’s recent “2024 Global Risk Impact Report” analyzes some of the recent and prevalent risks facing businesses today. The report looked at four types of physical threats: floods, theft, geopolitical conflict and civil unrest. According to the report, the majority of leaders surveyed said that their agency isn’t taking a proactive approach to identifying and managing risk. 

Thirty-nine percent of executives who say their organization experienced a physical threat in the last 24 months and 43% of federal leaders found that physical threats most affected employee safety. The report found that local leaders and emergency managers ranked public and employee safety first when asked what areas were most impacted by unexpected physical threats. For executives, the other areas impacted the most were supply chain (38%) and employee confidence (34%), while federal leaders said the top areas impacted by these threats were compliance (37%) and agency reputation (35%). 

The report found that sixty-three percent of executives and 51% of federal leaders said their organization or agency experienced unanticipated impacts “most of the time” or “always” as a result of the physical threats they experienced in the past 24 months. Twenty-six percent of state and local leaders said there were unanticipated impacts on their agency “always” or “most of the time” when they indirectly experienced threats or hazards.

According to the report, 72% of state and local leaders surveyed said crime poses the biggest risk to response and recovery in 2024. However, the report found that 26% of executives and 35% of federal leaders surveyed said crime poses the biggest risk to resilience in 2024.

The report found that 36% of executives surveyed said natural disasters and infrastructure/technology failures pose the biggest risk to their organization in 2024. Thirty-nine percent of federal leaders surveyed said infrastructure/ technology failures and transportation accidents pose the biggest risk to

According to the report, 56% of executives and 53% of federal leaders said their top priority is preparing for a physical threat crisis that puts employee safety or operations at risk. However, 45% of executives have a mitigation plan in place for natural disasters, even though it’s the top physical threat on their radar for 2024. Likewise, 72% of state and local leaders say the biggest risk in 2024 is crime, yet 63% have a mitigation plan in place for this threat.

The report found that 28% of executives and 22% of federal leaders say that threat detection, real-time intelligence and alerts have the greatest potential to help improve their resilience program. A similar percentage of executives (17%) and state and local leaders (18%) believe incident/task management will help, while 27% of federal leaders think historical threat data reporting/analysis holds the most promise when it comes to improving resilience.

The report included the following recommendations to protect employees from risks:

• Evaluate your current resilience program. 
• Take a hard look at the results of your evaluation and take note of the biggest barriers to being proactive. 
• Use historical data to plan and prepare for physical threats and the unanticipated outcomes.
• Invest in technology that enables you to be proactive and detect threats early. 
• Build the right framework to accelerate discovery. 

No matter what the threat is, organizations need to be clear while communicating to their employees. A lack of transparency leads to a lack of trust among employees, which can lead to a number of issues in the event of an emergency. While developing a strong resilience program, keep employees involved in the process.