How Your Organization Should Prepare For Civil Disturbance

• Civil disturbance is any organized mass mobilization of civil groups for expression of disagreement or dissatisfaction over a course through open and public demonstration. Such course oftentimes includes government actions or policies, civil right concerns, animal right, business concerns, and socio-economic or religious issues.

Civil disturbance may occur in form of industrial strike where an interest group may decide to down tool and refuse to work for their organization unless a particular concern is addressed. It may be a protest where some civil groups march on the streets or other locations with placards to show dissatisfaction about a concern.

Civil disturbance can come as a demonstration – where the concern groups march in different form within the community to show non-acceptance or disagreement over a course. Other coercive ways civil disturbance may take place include picketing, lockout, riot and stay-at-home. This forms are usually marked by intent for commotion and violence.

In the fast-evolving contemporary world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity otherwise known as VUCA it makes sense for organizations to be prepared to respond to civil disturbance with its potential for business disruption in different ways. Many countries of the world are currently faced with challenge of dealing with and addressing civil disturbance.

Regardless of the form a civil disturbance takes, it has potential to cause worry. See below, some common concerns during civil disturbance and the strategic ways your organization can approach and mitigate its impacts.

• Safety and security concerns: civil disturbance is perceived to be a threat to safety and security of people and assets within the community. In reality, especially in cases where it turns to violence it can actually cause injuries, damages, destruction and even fatality.
• Apprehension: civil disturbance takes away peace and spread fears, anxiety and uneasiness in the community. This is enough to affect productivity in the workplace.
• Potential business disruption: civil disturbance can alter routine business activity. E.g., it disrupts movement of people and supply chain.
• Potential revenue loss: civil disturbance can lead to loss of revenues for businesses impacted by it. Example is when customers, clients and service providers are unable to move around to exchange goods and services. Man-hour loss is also a revenue loss.
• Elevated risk: civil disturbance has potential to increase business risk especially when it persists beyond anticipated period. It creates uncertainties and increases high cost of doing business.

How your organization should prepare for civil disturbance: 

Set up BCP committee: business continuity planning committee must be in place. This committee should be comprised of functional leads and other critical stakeholders in the organization. The group will be charged with strategic response before, during and after event of civil disturbance and other emergencies.

 Have comprehensive BCP: your organization should have a business continuity plan. This document will provide step by step guide for responding to emergencies which have potential to cause business disruption. The plan should be a fit-for-purpose one; that considers peculiarity of your operating environment. It is recommended that SWOT analysis precedes this plan.

Maintain strategic communication: the business continuity plan must make explicit declaration about communication during emergencies. This should include, the focal person, what should be communicated? How it will be communicated? And who should carry out such communication? The essence of strategic communication is to manage panic and to comply with regulatory requirements.

Reach out to stakeholder: contemporary business world thrives better on shared resources. Reaching out to community and industry stakeholders during civil disturbance is highly recommended. Such group may include regulatory authorities, law enforcement, and industry players. When you reach out, you will know more and take better informed decision.

Maintain frequent updates: it pays better to ensure that frequent updates are provide to your employees and relevant others during civil disturbance. Your workforce will have reasonable trust and confidence for updates shared from trusted authority within the organization than being bamboozled by social media updates. Updates from the organization must be credible, apt and direct enough to reflect the real-time situation report and the approved actions.

Civil disturbance is a reality of modern VUCA world. It will always occur in different dimensions. To be prepared for it, is the way your organization should go, so as to mitigate its impact on your business.

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About Author

Azubuike Nwenewo

is a seasoned Security Practitioner; Police Officer, Security Coach, Blogger and Author. He is passionate about peacebuilding and value protection. He is an advocate for positive peace and demilitarization. He likes reading and writing.

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