Infosys, HCLTech, and Cognizant have issued advisories to employees about potential food service disruptions due to LPG shortages linked to Middle East tensions. The companies are asking staff to consider bringing meals from home as a precautionary measure.
The advisories follow energy market volatility triggered by escalating geopolitical tensions. LPG supply chains face disruption, affecting commercial kitchens and cafeteria operations across major IT campuses in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai.
What boards should note here is the speed of operational impact. Geopolitical events are translating into workplace logistics within days, not weeks. This is not about immediate financial materiality. This is about the infrastructure dependencies that boards often overlook when assessing business continuity frameworks.
The IT sector’s response reveals something about operational resilience planning. Companies with dispersed campus operations and large employee bases are finding that seemingly distant geopolitical events create immediate operational decisions. Food services, transportation, and facility management become risk vectors.
The energy supply disruption also exposes a gap in how boards typically frame geopolitical risk. Most board discussions focus on market access, regulatory changes, or currency impacts. Fewer boards systematically review supply chain dependencies for basic operational services.
During my work on business continuity assessments, the ‘last mile’ operational risks often receive less board attention than headline financial exposures. LPG shortages affecting employee food services might seem trivial compared to revenue disruptions, but they signal broader supply chain vulnerabilities that boards should be tracking.
The timing here matters too. IT companies are issuing these advisories during earnings season, when board attention is typically focused on quarterly performance metrics. Operational disruptions during this period create additional complexity for board oversight.
My Boardroom Takeaway: Directors should ask management for an updated assessment of ‘second-order’ geopolitical risks affecting daily operations. The standard geopolitical risk dashboard may miss supply chain vulnerabilities for basic services. Companies with large campus operations should consider whether their business continuity plans adequately address scenarios where global tensions affect local operational infrastructure. A prudent approach would be to review whether the audit committee’s risk monitoring framework captures these operational dependencies effectively.