London is on the move most days — but on 7th September, we were reminded how suddenly everything can stop.
Trains sit in depots. Platforms empty. People queue for buses or scramble for bikes (and the rush for alternative transport showed, with the London Ambulance Service reporting a 44% increase in bike collision incidents).
The September 2025 London Underground strikes have put continuity planning to the test — and the cost is steep. The London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates the strike will hit the city with £230 million in direct losses, with millions more in indirect disruption. Meanwhile, customers expect answers. Regulators still expect oversight. And leadership will expect clear decisions that safeguard both operations and reputation.
From frontline staff to critical back-office operations, these strikes are an example of how a single transport failure can ripple across an entire enterprise — and community. But the conversation doesn’t stop at transportation or even the UK. Around the world, organizations are being tasked with anticipating and withstanding disruptions across transport, labor, and civic stability.
Before we explore how to prepare your operational resilience strategy, it’s worth looking at what the September 2025 Tube strikes actually involve and why businesses everywhere should be paying attention.
First Thing’s First: What Are the London Underground Strikes?
The London Underground strikes were a week-long walkout from 7–12 September 2025 by approximately 10,000 RMT union staff that brought most Tube lines to a standstill for several days. The union demanded shorter working hours and better fatigue measures, and while talks continue, further strikes remain possible.
These strikes are part of a broader pattern of industrial action that has affected London’s transport system regularly since 2010, typically centring on disputes over job cuts, pensions, pay rates, safety concerns, and working conditions.
So, what can organizations learn from this particular event about continuity planning? It all starts with a clear, proactive plan.
4 Steps to Keep Your Operations Moving Through Disruption
These kinds of incidents are a powerful reminder that operational resilience isn’t just a compliance box. When civil unrest, strikes, protests, or general transportation pauses threaten to bring your organization to a standstill, the businesses that keep moving are the ones that have planned ahead.
The good news? There are concrete steps your organization can take right now to minimize disruption, protect critical services, and maintain trust with customers, employees, and regulators.
Operational resilience is no longer about surviving the next crisis – it’s about building adaptive capacity that enables companies to thrive in uncertainty.
Here are four essential actions to help you stay resilient when everything around you slows down.
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Stabilise Critical Services
Start with what matters most: the services your customers rely on and the outcomes you must protect. Your response begins here.
- Run a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) – Identify your most critical operations. Determine how long each can be down before it causes serious disruption. Map upstream and downstream dependencies.
- Set Impact Tolerances – Define the maximum acceptable downtime, backlog, or missed outputs per service. Translate these into minimum staffing, systems, and location needs.
- Assign Service Owners – Name individuals responsible for keeping each critical service running. They should have authority to make trade-offs and shift work during disruption.
- Map Dependencies – List key teams, vendors, systems, and locations tied to each critical service. Highlight single points of failure and define workarounds.
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Define Operating Modes and Clear Triggers
Speed comes from decisions that have already been made. Defining operating modes in advance (and the triggers that activate them) helps your team shift gears quickly without confusion or delays.
A few effective options include:
- Remote First – All roles that can be remote shift immediately. Onsite presence is limited to essential personnel only.
- Split Operations – Teams are divided between remote and onsite. Staggered shifts reduce pressure on transport and workspace availability.
- Site Consolidation – Close non-essential sites temporarily. Move critical work to resilient, well-supported locations.
Critical Onsite – Maintain only core staffing. Use defined access lists and safety escorts if needed.
Every mode should link back to your impact tolerances from Step 1. Assign an operational lead who can activate these modes without waiting on executive approval. Document each switch: what triggered it, who made the call, and how long the mode is expected to last. The faster your teams move, the more likely you are to stay within your resilience thresholds.
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Build Intelligence & Communication Discipline
When disruption happens, the quality of your information and the speed of your communication will define your response. Strong decision-making relies on timely, verified intelligence, and your people need clear, actionable updates they can trust.
- Monitor trusted intelligence sources – Stay ahead of disruptions using transport operator feeds, city alerts, police briefings, union announcements, and verified social media insights.
- Use clear, consistent messaging – Keep pre-approved templates ready for employees, customers, regulators, and media. Prioritize speed and clarity over perfection.
- Choose the right channels – Use communication methods that reach people fast: SMS, push notifications, recorded hotlines, or internal alerting systems.
- Set expectations with every message – Be specific about what is impacted and what isn’t. Share the next expected update time and always follow through.
- Track engagement and requests for help – Monitor acknowledgments and escalation flags so you can direct support where it’s needed most.
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Prepare for What’s Next
Resilience isn’t built once. It’s maintained through iteration, learning, and testing under pressure.
Scenario-based testing is one of the most effective ways to identify gaps before they’re exposed during a real event. Run exercises that simulate localised disruptions, like a transport strike near a major office, or more complex scenarios involving multiple triggers, such as a protest combined with reduced vendor support or network outages.
Each test should involve the full chain of response: HR, facilities, IT, security, service owners, and key third-party contacts. After-action reviews should focus on what worked, where delays occurred, and whether impact tolerances were maintained.
Document lessons learned, refine your playbooks, and adjust your continuity plans based on real performance — not assumptions. The next disruption may not look like the last one, but the ability to adapt and respond quickly will always be the differentiator.
Resilience Is The Operational Advantage
When the trains stop (physically or metaphorically) your business doesn’t have to.
When and where a disruption occurs may feel out of your control, but how you respond is entirely within your power. With the right plans, the right technology, and the right mindset, organizations can weather interruptions without missing a beat.
Want help strengthening your continuity strategy? Speak with one of our experts to assess your readiness and build a plan that keeps your business running, no matter what.
