CorpComms Magazine

Six out of ten London firms anticipate almost no impact on their ability to carry on with 'business as usual' during the Olympic Games, a report reveals.

Just one quarter of London businesses are assessing the risks and opportunities to them resulting from the capital's hosting of the games, despite the fact that more than half of UK companies feel London 2012 will deliver increased demand for their services, according to a survey by financial consultancy Deloitte.

Businesses nationwide are even more nonchalant about the event, with less than a third expecting any impact on day-to-day operations. Seven out of ten retailers and over half of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industries are similarly phlegmatic.

Perhaps encouragingly, very few employers are intimidated by the prospect of the games, with just six per cent concerned about potential security incidents. But this sense of security is in many cases extending to their business operations, with just eight per cent preparing for any disruption to their supply chain and seven per cent anticipating possible resource scarcity (such as hotel availability). 

The biggest perceived areas of disruption are transport, which worries more than one in three employers, and low staff availability, anticipated by a fifth of businesses. With McDonald's currently running a very high profile campaign to recruit 70,000 volunteers - the 'Games Makers' - each for a ten day period, staffing may be one of the biggest issues to affect employers over the 29 days of games.

Heather Hancock, London 2012 partner at Deloitte, said: 'The London 2012 Games will be a great sporting, spectator and viewer event - it will set the capital and the whole country alight. It's a good start that, with just under two years to go, 25 per cent of the businesses we surveyed are already thinking about the impact and the opportunities of London 2012. These companies stand to be best placed to benefit from the business boost the Games can deliver.

'However, an event of this scale, with sites across London and throughout the country, will present some serious challenges to those companies who operate in and around venues for the Games if they fail to understand and plan ahead. This makes some of our findings really surprising.'

Rick Cudworth, head of the business continuity and resilience team at Deloitte, said: 'Many of these businesses need a wake-up call. They operate in service industries where people are vital, where the supply chain is time critical and where having products on the shelf or food to serve in restaurants is essential to their daily business. 

'We believe that - with insight and planning - businesses can maximise the opportunities to benefit commercially from London 2012. The clock is ticking and the planning needs to start now.

'The responses from our survey suggest that many companies are either underestimating the impact the Games will have on their business or they haven't conducted accurate assessments. 

'There is a disconnect here in that many businesses are expecting to see an increase in demand for their services but are not planning or thinking about what they need to do in order to secure that extra business. They should recognise that their competitors will be, and in some cases already are planning for this upturn. Relying on an assumption that demand will increase automatically could leave them out in the cold come 2012.'

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