3 Rules to Help Elevate Your Business Continuity Strategy

3 Rules to Help Elevate Your Business Continuity Strategy
April 28, 2025 6 mins

3 Rules to Help Elevate Your Business Continuity Strategy

3 Rules to Help Elevate Your Business Continuity Strategy

Half of the world’s top economic loss events impacted the U.S. in 2024. As natural catastrophes continue to grow in frequency and severity, enhancing a business continuity strategy helps ensure organizations are prepared for the unexpected.

Key Takeaways
  1. Aon data found that two out of three businesses had no plan to help maintain their operations and ensure employee safety after the L.A. wildfires.
  2. Building a strong business continuity strategy delivers long-term resilience for both the organization and its people.
  3. Follow these three rules to elevate your strategies and be prepared should a catastrophe strike your operations.

The recent catastrophic wildfires that struck the Los Angeles area were not only among the costliest wildfires ever recorded, but they also revealed that many impacted companies did not have a formal response and recovery plan in place to deal with it.

According to Aon’s Wildfire Client Pulse Survey of 119 organizations with employees in impacted areas, 66 percent of companies had no plan to help keep their business operating and ensure employee support. Fortunately, though, more than eight in 10 businesses surveyed confirmed they’d be reviewing or improving their plans in the near future.1

Weather volatility is continuing to increase the severity and frequency of natural catastrophes in the U.S. and around the globe. In 2024, five of the top 10 global economic loss events struck the U.S. Further, 78 percent of global insured losses in 2024 were recorded in the U.S. That trend continued through the first quarter of 2025. As a result, business leaders must continue to rise to the challenge and not only create and update their business continuity strategies, but also elevate them.

With a strategy that builds long-term resilience for both the business and its people, organizations will be better equipped for the unexpected. These three rules, drawn from lessons learned from recent natural catastrophes and other risk considerations, can help elevate business continuity strategies.

Rule #1: Always Conduct a Risk Assessment

Too few companies do a risk assessment regularly or at all — but this is a critical first step for a stronger business continuity strategy.

“Companies need to know what risks are inherent in their business, culture, geography and beyond, how susceptible they are to those risks and what the possible negative impacts are if that risk occurs,” says Tony Adame, director of Business Continuity for Aon’s Global Risk Consulting. “As natural catastrophes increase, the risks to the business and its people are increasing as well and must be assessed frequently.”

Businesses must regularly ask themselves various questions based on their specific exposures. For example, if a business has a footprint in California:

  1. Have we fully assessed wildfire risk not only as it relates to property, but also the supply chain?
  2. How will our business be interrupted?
  3. What impact will this have on our people and their ability to work as expected?

The same careful questioning goes for Gulf Coast operations, which face hurricane risks. The important differentiator is not just knowing the risks but understanding the extent of vulnerability and impact.

Risk assessments can help quantify risk and establish a risk threshold. They can also form the basis for critical processes, including business continuity plans and insurance, as well as necessary resources to manage and respond if an event occurs.

Rule #2: Rethink Your Risk Management Structure

As companies continue to build resilience around natural catastrophe exposures, they are also assessing gaps in their risk management strategies, structures and business continuity plans. Following the L.A. wildfires, Aon’s survey revealed that 82 percent of organizations plan to review or improve their preparedness plans. To do so, many will need to change their risk management structure to allow for more dynamic and integrated risk management and business continuity strategies.

In addition to fostering more agility across the organization, rethinking risk structure and roles can also change how organizations use data and analytics to push decision making. The use of data and analytics to build more sophisticated capabilities can go a long way in a business continuity strategy, enabling companies to make better decisions faster. To make these changes, companies will need to take a different approach to talent and consider risk roles as a strategic and executive-level function.

Rule #3: Build a Risk Framework

In the event of an incident companies need to be able to rapidly respond to a crisis with the goal of protecting employees, customers, financial stability, the brand, property, technology and operational integrity. Having a pre-designed, well-established, thoughtful risk and business continuity framework will help companies achieve this.

A strong risk framework should:

  1. Utilize three critical components: discovery, planning and governance:

    2. Discovery – risk assessment and business impact analysis
    Planning – emergency response and management, crisis management and communications, business unit continuity planning
    Governance – plan auditing, updating, training and exercising

  2. Allow companies to act and make decisions quickly for a number of risks, with more agility and flexibility and a shared understanding of what needs to happen across teams and functional groups.
  3. Help companies quickly identify priorities and actions, like understanding the impact of a given incident on people, facilities, IT and the supply chain — and knowing where to act first to maintain operations and safety.

With this risk framework, companies also have a stronger narrative to share with insurers — letting them know what they’ve done to protect themselves and mitigate risks. As those risk solutions evolve to meet the changing needs of companies and their business continuity strategies, the framework can help guide both strategic and operational decisions.

Clearly, business continuity strategies will continue to play a critical role in responding to crisis — and companies who follow these three rules will be the ones who lead the way.

Quote icon

There are many lessons to be learned from increasing natural catastrophes. Companies have an opportunity today to strengthen their organizations for the future.

Tony Adame
Director, Business Continuity
Aon’s Thought Leader
  • Tony Adame
    Director, Business Continuity

1 L.A. Wildfires Highlight Urgent Need for Employee Support and Business Resilience, Aon

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This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.

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