Impact on employees is biggest long-term Katrina-related business disruption worry

The Procurement Strategy Council, the Real Estate Executive Board and the Supply Chain Executive Board, three membership-based divisions of the Corporate Executive Board (EXBD), a company providing executives with best practices research, have released the results of a survey asking executives to forecast degrees of business disruption arising from Hurricane Katrina. Detailed results can be found on www.psc.executiveboard.com (for procurement executives), www.reeb.executiveboard.com (for corporate real estate executives), and www.sceb.executiveboard.com (for supply chain executives).

The survey of executives at Fortune 1000 companies reveals that, while companies across industries expect near-term, targeted economic disruption in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, they worry most about their company's ability to provide adequate support to employees and residents in the region. Executives were asked to forecast degrees of disruption across twelve different possible adverse business outcomes arising from Hurricane Katrina (e.g., disruption to energy supply, disruption to employees in the region, etc.).

"Many companies have told us that they lost a lot of infrastructure in the Gulf coast," said David Evans, managing director of the Supply Chain Executive Board. "But most of them are also good at disaster recovery and know what they need to do. According to our members, the real issue here is how to get support to people in the region. This is a human tragedy, not a business tragedy. And the data shows that: by a factor of nine, our executives are most concerned about how to help their employees put their lives back together. This is the lesson executives are taking back to their planning processes for 2006."

Key lessons for executives include:

1. "Disruption to my company's employees" consistently ranks among the top three concerns across industries - the sole risk factor that registers this level of apprehension.

2. "Total disruption by the close of 2005" consistently ranked among the bottom three concerns across industries - comments from executives suggest a high degree of confidence in the ability of businesses to effectively mobilise disaster recovery plans.

3. The severity of impact does not correlate with company size or industry.

•Date: 22nd September 2005 • Region: US • Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
Rate this article or make a comment - click here