Knowledge Feed: Preparing for the Unexpected

Business is all about finding the right balance between risk and reward. To succeed, companies must grasp opportunities, while coping with operational setbacks. And the risks they fear the most often stem from disruptive events they expect the least.

Fortunately, there are preparations food businesses can make to manage unexpected adversity. With thoughtful, thorough planning they can achieve twin goals: to avoid many potential crises before they materialize; and, if the worst happens, to minimize and mitigate the negative impacts.

Here's how you can approach the task:

1. Develop a business risk register
At a company level – beyond just food safety and health and safety – a good starting point is to develop a risk register to raise awareness of, and set up defences against, potential setbacks.

2. Focus on health and safety, and food safety risks
Such risks are inevitable for all food businesses, however well managed they may be. Even well-established brands in fixed locations, such as hotels or high street restaurants, face the possibility of unforeseen crises, ranging from supplier failure and staff sickness to power outages, fire, and flood.

There are likely to be even more unexpected challenges and localized issues in the dynamic catering environment of temporary or seasonal outlets, from refreshment kiosks at the seaside to pop-up cafes and bars at summer events. Working collaboratively, colleagues initially brainstorm all the plausible risks you can think of.

3. Involve key stakeholders
Consider who has useful perspectives on health and safety and food safety risks and ensure they are part of this risk management team and can contribute to your risk planning process.

4. Gather risk intelligence
At this stage, remain open-minded and garner information from a wide variety of sources to describe different risks. For example, you should consider: horizon scanning, competitors’ challenges, seasonality. See the full breakdown in our helpful document linked below.

5. Analyze, rate and prioritize identified risks
The next step is to examine and 'weight' the identified risks, based on the likelihood of the event occurring and its potential severity. Prioritize risks that ‘high likelihood, high impact’.

6. Conduct risk management tests
Many risk scenarios can not only be foreseen and discussed, but also tested or simulated in a way that highlights your organization's ability to cope. Testing can take many forms, from examining the effectiveness of a specific process control to measuring the impact of training that has taken place. Testing methods include:

• Food safety audits
• Mystery shoppers
• Simulated product recall
• Crisis exercises
• Supply chain due diligence
• Standards compliance.

7. Put a crisis plan in place
All food businesses should ensure they have a business continuity framework in place. If lightning should strike – perhaps literally – it's critical to get a 'plan B' in place quickly to ensure business continuity and maintain stakeholder confidence. Some emergency testing and planning solutions, such as crisis exercises, will appeal mainly to large businesses.

8. Harness 'people power'
If you involve key stakeholders early in your risk management planning, there's more you can do to harness the power of your people throughout your organization. Engaging, motivating, and equipping them with the right skills is critical.

Employee communications and training are key. You'll need to explain why risk management testing and business continuity planning are important to health and safety and food safety, and therefore ultimately to business success. Some will then need training to implement your chosen measures effectively.

9. Seek expert support
External consultants can work collaboratively with you to prepare for the unexpected. With their experience, health and safety and food safety hazards can be more easily identified, assessed, avoided, or mitigated, without spending excessive time and resources on low-risk or low impact scenarios. They can then help you implement the appropriate testing methods, put a continuity framework in place, provide practical training and advice.

To sum up, 'unexpected' events that could have a major impact on your business are often foreseeable, sometimes avoidable, and usually manageable. The solution lies in awareness and planning. Put simply: 'Be prepared'.