Some critical events may be familiar to organizations, they may happen repeatedly or even on a set schedule. Others may present new challenges that responders haven’t seen or experienced before. In a worst-case scenario, events could even happen concurrently, forcing responders to split their attention while trying to anticipate and account for the combined effects.

Accelerated trends toward hybrid and remote work compounded with the increasing frequency of critical events — such as severe weather, violence, and other threats — have made it more difficult for organizations to keep their people safe. Thankfully, today’s HR professionals are rising to the challenge with the help of technology.

As critical events increase in frequency and magnitude, organizations need to ensure that building and maintaining operational resilience is incorporated into their long-term strategy. Operational resilience is more than just having a plan to respond to critical events as they happen; it’s a critical step built into every strategy to ensure that businesses are prepared to face the unexpected.

Your IT team just finished resolving a complex incident, customer service finished their last call about the issue, and your business is back to being fully operational. Now that the storm has passed, you should be planning a postmortem to determine the cause of the incident and lessons learned. Postmortems require specific data that can highlight where your team is succeeding and where they can improve.