From COVID-19 to the Middle East crisis

COVID-19 taught us a lot of things: the importance of health, how we all need social interaction and why amateurs shouldn’t cut hair.

But one overriding lesson it continues to teach us is how to plan.

Now, we think we are a nation of planners; we can form a queue with the best of them, yet the merest hint of a toilet roll shortage and things can go south.

What COVID-19 also taught us was the ability to spot when there might be something on the horizon, which is what we are seeing at the moment.

With the Strait of Hormuz closed and no sign of it opening, we’ve seen the price of oil rise and businesses considering how they might cope with increased costs, interruption to supplies and business continuity.

The experience of COVID-19 provides a lens on how a fuel shortage might affect supply chains, but working life too.

Following their experiences in 2020, most businesses now have a continuity plan, which considers different scenarios and how they might respond.

The recent drift back to the office may need to be reversed on a temporary basis to reduce fuel consumption, meetings may be moved online and consideration given to greater use of public transport.

The experience of COVID-19 has meant such plans are much easier to implement because of the technical leap we all took in 2020, where those who had only put a toe in the water of online working were pitched into the deep end.

To most of us now, online is second nature, and our increased resilience means we are no strangers to innovative ways of working.

Whatever is on the horizon, business resilience is a key consideration for any organisation and doesn’t need to be complex; it is really just thinking through the potential impacts on the business of given scenarios, deciding on the severity of their impact should the worst happen, and planning how to mitigate them.

To be clear, there is no suggestion the UK will run out of fuel; we won't be banging pans on the doorstep for tanker drivers any time soon.

But, prudent plans, which hopefully will never be implemented, help with that very British ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ attitude.

And most businesses are in a good place to do just that.

Rachel Anderson is assistant director of policy at the North East Chamber of Commerce

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