Just as employees today are driving their organizations to be employee-centric, governments are also seeing the need to be people-centric, across the span of services they offer. This often means eschewing one-size-fits-all approaches and instead mapping services to the individual, when possible (e.g., increasing options for services accessibility and providing patient-centric healthcare). Governments may look to focus on the user journey through the system and embed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) principles and reconciliation within day-to-day delivery.

• This encompasses planning for a wide range of scenarios and eventualities, both short-term and long-term, and with a focus across people, industry, and society. For governments in the year ahead, they will see further areas to prepare for, including new COVID variants, the climate crisis and natural disasters, a continued shift to hybrid work environments, cyberattacks and data breaches, and the need to ensure proper digital infrastructure is in place to enable businesses to operate.  

Governments can also look to go beyond legacy business-continuity work and “band-aid” solutions to more holistic and proactive strategies that include investing in talent, building organizational culture built on learning, and addressing risks associated with modernizing government services. Technology, including scenario modeling and analytics, can significantly increase preparedness, as can creating and discussing comprehensive crisis response scenarios and playbooks.

• Like the other resilience characteristics, adaptability is multi-faceted. It includes the ability to pivot, enable government to happen anywhere, provide services across digital touchpoints, expedite decision-making processes, support and promote continuous learning, and much more. Crucially, it also includes a government’s ability to quickly scale its services, which often means building flexibility into how it accesses appropriate skill sets.

It’s important to note that adaptability in government is more expansive and nuanced than adaptability in other industries. Governments see the need to react and adapt to changing conditions and expectations themselves (e.g., by delivering their services online), but can also leverage their ecosystem to help deliver those services with agility. Smart procurement and flexibility in allocating talent are critical.

• For the government and public sector, collaboration internally and externally is often important, as governments typically don’t have all the capabilities they require in-house:

a. Internal: Organizations that support products and services with a team that are able to pivot and respond more effectively.

b. External: Governments can seek to foster more deliberate collaboration with one another at every level, as well as with ecosystem partners and providers to effectively build a more resilient society.

• Trust is always important—often even more so during tumultuous times, as organizations that have built trust equity can better preserve and regain trust during a crisis. And trust isn’t just something abstract—it’s measurable and actionable, spanning physical, emotional, digital, and financial dimensions.

How can government leaders build trust? This is often a politicized challenge today; however, being more transparent with how the business of government is run and communicated to people can help avoid perceptions of mismanagement or even corruption. This transparent approach, in turn, can help cultivate trust and build long-term resilience.

• Responsible governments and organizations demonstrate purpose and consistently act on it—supporting their employees, people, society, the environment, and more. They also demonstrate authenticity and accountability.

Among government leaders who say their organizations are cultivating resilient cultures, 77 percent globally say their organization has “a reputation for valuing employees,” 74 percent say it has “done well demonstrating a commitment to transparent ESG,” and 70 percent say it has “a reputation for helping the community” (2021 Deloitte Global Resilience Report).

• Smart governments use modern tools to provide great services. Today, that means that they use data, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and other advanced technologies. They empower their teams to innovate, including through access to cloud-based tools. These organizations also build systems and governance around the use of new tools, so that their use can be sustainable, inclusive, and accountable. Taking a digital-first approach goes beyond using technology; at its core, it’s about combining new tools with a relentless focus on achieving better services and outcomes for peoples.

In particular, the ability to be smart and use technology to prepare for and even preempt disruptions can help foster anticipatory government—where governments proactively design procedures to anticipate life events and prevent problems (rather than react to them) regularly and successfully through data management. The most resilient have sound data management already in place.

• Another driver of resilience in government is a commitment to inclusion. Resilient governments have—and value—diverse employees who are empathetic to the diverse lived experiences of the people they serve.

Governments can also demonstrate employee-centricity and cultivate resilience by promoting resilience in their employees and leaders themselves. That is, how well they can face and overcome stressors and challenges while at work? Factors such as an individual’s personality, personal life, psychological and physical health, community, financial situation, and access to workplace resources all impact employee resilience. Government leaders have reported increased mental health strain during COVID-19. To improve employee resilience, government organizations can proactively tackle it—giving leaders and employees at all levels resources, programs, strategies, and a work culture/design that supports their well-being, while also working to break down stigmas around mental health challenges.

The most resilient organizations start with the people who lead them. The events of the last two years saw contrasts in leadership practices and how organizations weathered events. Resilient government leaders tend to stay focused on the long-term and look to address the many areas that are required to cultivate resilience to prepare for what’s ahead.