A new report published by Funding Circle, in partnership with insights consultancy Savanta, has attempted to quantify the benefits that being highly resilient brings to small businesses in the UK.
To explore the characteristics of being a resilient business, the research rated small businesses against financial, operational, and personal resilience metrics, with those performing well across all three categories most likely to thrive during challenging times.
The research revealed that:
- Highly resilient businesses outperform financially and are more positive about future growth prospects.
- Almost half (49 percent) of the businesses surveyed said they achieved a better financial outcome in 2022 compared to 2021. However, this figure is nearly four times higher amongst those rated as high resilience compared to low resilience (74 percent vs 20 percent).
- Looking ahead, over half (54 percent) of businesses are positive about their growth prospects in 2023 – but this is six times higher for high resilience businesses (84 percent vs 13 percent).
This is an overwhelming difference in confidence, demonstrating the value in focusing on resilience. And it’s not all about financial performance; the correlation holds when you remove this element. Businesses that show high operational resilience are three times as likely to be positive about their future financial outlook than low operational resilience counterparts (86 percent compared to 30 percent). Similarly looking at personal resilience alone, 62 percent of high resilience businesses are more positive about the future compared with 44 percent for low resilience.
One element of highly resilience businesses is a focus on wellbeing:
- An eighth (12 percent) of highly resilient businesses are making ‘improving staff wellbeing’ their top priority over the next 12 months, and 35 percent place it in their top three, in comparison to just 5 percent and 22 percent respectively amongst low resilience businesses.
- Three times as many low resilience businesses have no wellbeing initiatives in place, compared to high resilience businesses.
Read the ‘Resilience in small businesses and the impact of staff wellbeing’ report (PDF).
