Museums and resiliency – The impact of the unforeseen

As museums gear up to welcome more visitors, we ask them to consider how resilient their organisation is and the plans in place to minimise future disruption.

What do we mean by resilience?

Resilience refers to the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. Museums face many risks which could impact their ability to trade. Some of these are known, and can be insured against, some are deemed to be too remote and chosen not to be insured against, and some are simply uninsurable. Whatever the risks faced, trustees have a duty to consider all risks and plan accordingly to mitigate their impact. This is where resiliency planning can assist.

Museums need to have appropriate people with suitable experience, or access to such experience, who can help identify risks that could impact them. These need to be assessed against likelihood of occurring and potential impact, which leads into designing policies and procedures that address these. Communication of these policies and procedures with relevant staff and stakeholders, in conjunction with periodic reviews and testing, are very important for effective recoveries. The aim is to minimise lost trading time and impact on people associated with museum operations.

Points to consider when reviewing resiliency

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?

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 procedures are best placed to recover following a crisis. How relevant are your procedures?

Resilience Roadmap

Hayes Parsons Insurance Broker’s Resilience Roadmap outlines key considerations within each of these areas, which can be self-scored with suggested recommendations to help the museum identify areas of potential weakness to improve.

The aim of the roadmap is to assist museums when assessing risks faced and should the unforeseen occur, these wider considerations should help:

  1. Minimise economic impact
  2. Enable a swift recovery
  3. Potentially protect vital income streams such as funding and grant bids.

Find out more

For more information or to discuss the resilience in your own museum, please get in touch with Ben Leah:

07554 455 041 | [email protected]