The Reality Department
Business Reality Index
The Business Reality Index — Wave One

UK business is
ready on paper.

61% of UK leaders tell us they're confident about the year ahead. The Index puts their operational readiness at 37.

Wave one is out now. The full interactive report is free.

The Reality Department
WAVE ONE · 2026
OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE · UK · n=500
The Business
Reality Index.
61% feel ready. The Index says 37.
A study of 500 UK senior decision-makers on confidence, readiness and what actually went wrong.
Reality. Properly understood.
[ AUGUST 2026 ]
The premise

Most resilience research measures the wrong thing.

It counts plans. Policies held, frameworks adopted, certifications achieved. All of it easy to ask about. All of it easy to answer.

None of it tells you whether an organisation could keep trading on a Tuesday morning when the systems don't come back up.

So we asked two questions instead of one. Do you have it. And have you tested it.

The distance between those two answers is the most revealing number in the study. It isn't close.

The gap

Braced for the bill.
Not for the breakdown.

88% of leaders put a cost, tax or demand risk in their top two for the year ahead. Only 20% named anything operational.

Then we looked at what actually went wrong over the last 24 months.

People leaving, systems failing and equipment breaking did the real damage. The two lists barely overlap. The report is about why.

56%
of the worst damage suffered was operational — not tax, not demand
Base: 500 senior decision-makers, UK organisations with 50+ employees
The report breaks this by size band, sector and who owns risk. One of those three cuts explains almost all of the variance.
The year ahead

Waiting on the Autumn budget.

We asked what UK businesses actually did after July's change of Prime Minister, and what they most want from the Autumn budget.

The mood is defensive. Forecasts have been reopened, pricing put back under review, and investment paused far more often than it's brought forward.

The report breaks every action and every ask by sector and size band — including the one sector whose top request is simply a period in which nothing changes.
28%
have delayed or paused investment since the change of PM
29%
want a cut to employer National Insurance — the single biggest ask
32%
have revisited their financial forecasts already
Base 500 · Actions since July · Top budget ask
The fear and the record

Bracing for the wrong thing.

Cyber and regulation absorb the anxiety about the next twelve months. People leaving, systems failing and equipment breaking did the actual damage over the last twenty-four.

Attention is following the headlines, not the incident log.

The report sets every feared risk against what actually happened, and shows where the gap between the two is widest.
28%
name cyber as their biggest worry for the year ahead
20%
the share of real disruptions cyber actually caused
Base 500 · Feared next 12 months vs greatest impact, last 24
Interactive · under 30 seconds

What's your Reality Index?

Three questions. The same three we asked 500 UK decision-makers. Answer them, then unlock your Reality Index and the full benchmark.

Question 1 of 3
How confident are you that your organisation could keep trading through a disruption lasting more than a week?
0 = not at all. 10 = completely.
6
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0 · NOT AT ALL10 · COMPLETELY
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Question 2 of 3
Do you have a documented business continuity plan?
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Question 3 of 3
Has it been tested in the last 12 months?
← Back
Almost there
Your Reality Index is ready.

Enter your email to reveal your score, see how you compare to 500 UK decision-makers, and get the full interactive report.

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We'll send you the report and the wave two results in February 2027. Nothing else unless you ask.
← Back
Your Reality Index
50
above the national Index of 37
Index avg 37

You hold a plan you haven't rehearsed. In this study, that group scored themselves highest on confidence and had the worst record on actual disruption.

The full picture is in the report.

Your score against your size band and your sector, and the 24 findings behind the Index.

500
Respondents
50+
Employees
UK
Nationwide

Senior decision-makers across strategy, finance, operations, technology, risk and people.

Read the full method →

The whole thing. Free.

You'll get the interactive report immediately, the PDF if you want something to forward, and the wave two results before anyone else.

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Who keeps using this
PR and comms teams

Full data tables available on request.

Marketing and comms leads

Benchmark your organisation against sectors you work in.

Insight leaders

A question set you can run internally, and a published external base to compare it against.

For journalists

Charts, full data tables and the questionnaire are available without a form.

jake@realitydepartment.co.uk
Cite as
The Business Reality Index 2026, The Reality Department. n=500 UK senior decision-makers at organisations with 50+ employees.
The Reality Department
Reality. Properly understood.
© 2026 · Business Reality Index · Wave One
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