Resilience planning for your museum

If there is one take away from the last 15 months, it is that the unforeseen, or perhaps the unthinkable, can happen say Hayes Parsons Insurance Brokers.

What do we mean by resilience?
Resilience refers to the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. From an insurance perspective, the major example would be the ability to recover from a serious incident, such as a fire. Some of these risks are known, and can be insured against, some are deemed to be too remote and chosen not to be insured against, and some may simply be uninsurable. Whatever the risks faced, trustees have a duty to consider all risks and plan accordingly to mitigate their impact. This is where resilience planning can assist.

Resilience planning

The objective of resilience planning is to help museums:

• minimise economic impact
• enable swift recoveries
• protect vital income streams such as funding and grant bids.

A sensible starting point could be to categorise key considerations:

• People – you have a duty of care to all trustees, staff, volunteers, and members of the public. How are you managing this duty?
• Property and assets – property is critical to operations and income. How could you manage without it and for what period?
• Reputation – many museums rely on the goodwill of others. Would your ability to operate be impacted by reputational damage?
• Business continuity – museums with robust documented business continuity plans are best placed to recover following a crisis. How relevant are your procedures?

After completing a resilience review, the museum should put in place plans and procedures to ensure that any identified threats can be dealt with quickly and efficiently. It is also vital at this point to ensure that all employees, volunteers, and other stakeholders are aware of such plans and their responsibilities in the event of a major incident.

Resilience Roadmap
Hayes Parsons Insurance Brokers’ Resilience Roadmap has been designed to assist museums in completing the above process. The roadmap outlines key considerations within each of the areas mentioned, where museums can self-score against their current approach with suggested recommendations to help identify areas for improvement. As with any scoring assessment, the recommendations are only helpful if you score yourself objectively and be brutally honest.

Click here to download Hayes Parsons Insurance Brokers’ Resilience Roadmap>>

To find out more or discuss the resilience in your own museum, please feel free to get in touch with Hayes Parsons’ museums expert, Ben Leah on 0117 930 1675|07554 455 041 or b.leah@hayesparsons.co.uk