Leveraging Benchmarking Data to Advance Resilience Program Maturity

CHALLENGE

A Fortune 500 retail organization was experiencing mounting concerns across four key risk areas, particularly in its crisis management and governance capabilities. While they had a functioning crisis management team prior to the pandemic, that team had shifted to serve as the COVID task force and never transitioned back. Additionally, their overall governance and oversight of crisis management lacked clarity within their broader resilience framework.

Two critical areas needing enhancement were:

1. Leadership Commitment & Executive Buy-In

2. Awareness & Education Across the Enterprise

The organization sought a credible, third-party benchmarking assessment to understand how similar companies were structuring their resiliency programs, with a particular interest in:

• Crisis management and crisis communications strategies

• Reporting structures and executive sponsorship

• Budget, staffing, and maturity levels across industry peers

  
  

SOLUTION

Following an in-depth intake session, we determined that a tailored Resilience Program Benchmarking Assessment would provide the strategic insight and external validation needed to initiate internal change. With over 20 years of compensation and resiliency program data—and 15+ years conducting benchmarking assessments—our team provided the data-driven credibility required for executive conversations.

Together with the client, we aligned on three peer group filters for comparative analysis:

• Industry Sector:

• Company Revenue

• Employee Count

To kick off the engagement, the client completed our proprietary Resilience Management Study questionnaire, which not only yielded a maturity score but also provided the detailed program context needed for peer comparisons.

RESULT

The customized benchmarking report revealed several critical insights:

- The organization aligned well with peers in ensuring the recoverability of critical systems and conducting BIAs/risk assessments.

- However, compared to all peer groupings, they significantly lagged in executive commitment, organizational positioning, and enterprise-wide integration.

- Their crisis management and communications capabilities were underdeveloped, and there was no pandemic preparedness policy in place.

- Unlike peers, they lacked regular program audits, exercises, training, and broad employee engagement strategies.

- Financial investment (budget and headcount) also fell short of industry standards.

While the findings underscored serious maturity gaps, the client saw the report as a critical turning point. Armed with objective, third-party benchmarking data, they now had the insights needed to:

• Validate internal concerns

• Engage leadership with data rather than opinion

• Build a phased roadmap for elevating program maturity

This assessment wasn’t a set of recommendations; it was a reality check grounded in peer-driven evidence. The client was deeply appreciative and energized to move forward with a clearer path toward building a more mature, integrated, and supported resilience program.