Views on organizational resilience and the ISO 22316 standard
A year ago, ISO published ISO 22316:2017, ‘Organizational resilience. Principles and attributes’. How has the standard been received? And are organizations using it? How do professionals view organizational resilience in general? Continuity Central recently conducted a survey to find out; and the final results are now available.
Introduction
During February and March 2018, Continuity Central conducting an online survey looking at the ISO 22316 organizational resilience standard and asking whether organizations are using it. Has ISO 22316 started an increase in the uptake of organizational resilience?
182 responses to the survey were received, with 70 percent from large organizations (with over 250 employees); 6 percent from medium-sized organizations (51 to 250 employees); and 24 percent from small organizations (50 or less employees).
Responses came from countries around the world, with the top five being:
- UK: 41 percent;
- US: 25.5 percent;
- Australia: 8.7 percent;
- Canada: 6.2 percent;
- India: 5 percent.
Final results
The results of the survey were as follows:
Question: Are you aware of the ISO 22316 organizational resilience standard?
71.4 percent of survey respondents said that they were aware of ISO 22316. 28.6 percent were not aware of it.
Question: Have you read ISO 22316?
Although almost three-quarters of respondents are aware of the ISO 22316 standard, less than a third (28.6 percent) have read it fully. A further 23.1 percent have partially read it.
Question: What is the overall quality of the ISO 22316 standard?
Overall, respondents are not highly impressed with ISO 22316. Asked to give it a grade out of five, with 1 being low quality and 5 being high quality, the results are as follows:
- 1/5: 7.4 percent
- 2/5: 16.8 percent
- 3/5: 51.6 percent
- 4/5: 20.0 percent
- 5/5: 4.2 percent.
Question: How easy was it to understand the ISO 22316 standard?
Again, respondents were asked to use a one (hard) to five (easy) scale to grade how easily they could understand ISO 22316. The results were:
- 1/5: 3.2 percent
- 2/5: 14.9 percent
- 3/5: 37.2 percent
- 4/5: 30.9 percent
- 5/5: 13.8 percent.
Respondents generally feel that ISO 22316 is understandable, with only 18.1 percent ranking it as being difficult to understand.
Question: After reading the ISO 22316 standard did you understand how you could practically implement it in your organization?
Using the grading scale, with one standing for ‘Not at all’ and five standing for ‘Yes, definitely’, respondents were asked to rate whether they felt that they could implement ISO 22316 in their organization. Only just over a fifth of respondents (21.3 percent) are confident that they would be able to do so. 51 percent said that they were ‘somewhat’ confident. Responses were:
- 1/5: 12.8 percent
- 2/5: 14.9 percent
- 3/5: 51.0 percent
- 4/5: 14.9 percent
- 5/5: 6.4 percent.
Question: When it comes to organizational resilience in general, what is your organizational attitude…
It appears that organizational resilience is starting to gain some ground. Respondents to this question said:
- We have not considered implementing organizational resilience and have no plans to do so: 16.0 percent
- We have considered implementing organizational resilience and decided not to implement it: 5.7 percent
- We have considered implementing organizational resilience and are implementing some aspects of it: 46.3 percent
- We have considered implementing organizational resilience and are in the process of fully implementing it: 13.7 percent
- We have already fully implemented an organizational resilience program: 18.3 percent.
Wider attitudes to organizational resilience seem to be relatively positive, with the majority (78.3 percent) of respondents’ organizations having implemented an organizational resilience program either partially or fully. Only 5.7 have looked at organizational resilience and decided not to implement it.
Survey respondents were asked to elaborate on their general view of organizational resilience. The verbatim responses can be read here as a PDF.
