Accenture’s new research report, “How to Grow Your Return on Resilience” analyzed 1,600 companies across 18 industries over the last seven years to understand how companies performed before, during and after a disruptive event, such as the pandemic.
The report explores corporate resilience along financial, business and technology dimensions, and found that the current definition of resilience, which concerns continuity planning and risk management, is outdated. The research reveals that highly resilient companies – those that view resilience as more than managing risk – increase revenues 6 percentage points faster than their peers, Accenture announced.
Highlights from the report:
Highly resilient companies have higher revenues. A company’s “return on resilience” takes the form of improved revenue growth and profitability, particularly over the long haul. This is especially apparent among the most resilient companies. These leaders are set to achieve a compound annual revenue growth rate that is 6 percentage points higher than their industry peers, and profit margins that are 8 percentage points higher. (Accenture defines a company’s return on resilience as its expected revenue growth and profit margin three years into the future and relative to revenue growth and profit margins of the average low-performing company in its industry.)
CEOs should make resilience personal. The CEO’s mindset around resilience can influence the mindset and actions of his/her employees. Accenture finds that CEOs who have a direct role in building worker resilience and mobilizing actions that enable long-term profitable growth, with 58% of workers believing their company’s CEO directly impacts their personal resilience. That matters, since highly resilient workers are 1.7 times more likely to drive a highly resilient enterprise.
Most companies are using an outdated definition of resilience. Accenture’s resilience index quantifies resilience by assessing a company’s strengths across six dimensions: financial, sales, technology, global operations, talent and sustainability. Only 15% of companies are achieving continuous growth, outperforming their industry peers across all six performance measures, the report said.
