Editorial
Disruptions are an enduring reality. Today, resilience has emerged as an indispensable skill, especially amidst the prevailing uncertainties. A SAS global survey reveals a stark increase in the value executives place on resilience, with 81% prioritizing it more now than in 2020. Despite 97% acknowledging its critical role in navigating change, only 47% perceive their organizations as resilient. However, there's a push towards bridging this gap, with 85% of executives committed to further investments in resilience. While technological, supply chain and operational facets are vital, the cornerstone of a comprehensive resilience strategy lies in human resilience. Let's explore this critical component and the building blocks that power it.
What Is Employee Resilience?
Employee resilience refers to the capacity of workers to endure, adapt and recover from adversity, stress and challenges. It encompasses mental, emotional,and behavioral flexibility, featuring traits like embracing change, adaptability, sustained productivity under pressure, emotional intelligence, a growth mindset, learning from setbacks, dedication to personal development and solid interpersonal skills. Essentially, it's about moving forward despite obstacles, uncertainty, volatility or change in the workplace.
While signs of low resilience will be dependent on the team, Isabel Pollen, a corporate coach to leaders and organizations, shared some common red flags that leaders can watch out for such as communications breakdown. “When our resilience goes, our cognition suffers and our ability to communicate becomes restricted and ultimately lazy, so as to save energy,” she explained. “Humor can evaporate, finding that when resilience isn’t there, nor is any sense of humor, causing things to rapidly become very rigid and serious.” Other indicators she highlighted are unusual or more frequent mistakes, as well as blurry boundaries.
Related Article: Is Burnout Getting Better or Worse? Survey Says It’s Complicated
Why Should You Care?
Resilience is a critical factor for organizational success and sustainability. It encourages a culture of innovation by treating failures as learning moments, leading to creative solutions. Resilience also supports mental health, reducing burnout and turnover and strengthens team cohesion through improved communication and a sense of community and belonging. Rather than a temporary benefit, it provides a lasting competitive edge, enabling organizations to navigate crises, rebound from setbacks and seize opportunities more effectively than their less resilient peers.
Common Challenges and Considerations
It all sounds wonderful, right? However, building employee resilience in organizations is a complex process that comes with its own set of challenges. Common hurdles include:
Balancing short-term pressures with long-term resilience goals
Organizations must balance addressing short-term business pressures and investing in long-term workforce resilience, as well as competing business needs, to ensure immediate actions do not undermine future success. Afterall, altering deep-seated behaviors and attitudes requires time, patience and adequate resources!
Lack of leadership support
Leaders may be preoccupied with other priorities or may not fully understand the importance of resilience, impacting the allocation of resources and attention to resilience-building programs, which require sustained commitment and active involvement to be successful.
Addressing diverse needs
Workforces have varying needs, experiences and stressors, making one-size-fits-all approaches ineffective. While it takes intention and careful crafting, organizations can create programs that are flexible and adaptable enough to meet individual needs.
“Everyone's version of resilience will be different, depending on a myriad of different factors,” Pollen said. “Once you have identified what resilience means for them, then look to build it from the inside out. It has to work that way, otherwise it simply isn't sustainable.”
Maintaining engagement and momentum
After initial enthusiasm, maintaining engagement and momentum over time can be challenging. Employees may become disengaged if they do not see rapid benefits, if the programming is not personalized or engaging enough, or if resilience efforts are not consistently integrated into the organization's practices and culture.
Related Article: Building a Resilient Organization for Turbulent Times
How to Build Employee Resilience
Pollen urges leaders to remember that building resilience cannot happen overnight and will require deliberate actions. Several key steps:
1. Assess your current resilience levels
Assess the current resilience levels within your organization to understand employees' perspectives on stress, workload, support systems and current resilience practices. Once you have a clear and accurate view you can identify the areas needing improvement.
2. Develop a comprehensive strategy
While your strategy will align with your needs and objectives, you should consider components such as resilience training and development programs, mental health support, mechanisms for providing and receiving feedback and initiatives aimed at fostering a supportive and inclusive workplace culture.
As you do, think about the dynamic needs of your workforce. For instance, enhancing physical and mental well-being might involve wellness programs, access to counseling services, flexible working arrangements or activities that promote work-life balance, addressing the holistic health of employees.
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Similarly, for growth and development, you will need to accommodate varied learning styles and capacities. There will be people that want to dive in deep to the topics and skills covered and those that may need a more approachable version.
Make sure that building resilience doesn’t fall into a “check-the-box strategy” where services or offerings are present, but not achieving the desired results.
3. Engage leadership and managers
Leadership and managers play a pivotal role in fostering employee resilience by creating an environment that values adaptability, learning and psychological safety.
Pollen said that by demonstrating adaptability in the face of challenges and openly discussing failures as learning opportunities, leaders set a tone that encourages employees to embrace change, experiment without fear of failure, and view setbacks as chances to grow. As Pollen cautioned, “We cannot build resilience without accountability — they come in the same package.”
By actively fostering a culture of continuous learning, offering professional development resources and opportunities, and rewarding adaptive and innovative behaviors, leaders instill a mindset of growth and forward momentum.
By prioritizing psychological safety and creating an environment where employees feel secure to freely express thoughts, ask questions, and raise concerns without fear of retribution, leaders foster a supportive atmosphere where individuals feel valued and empowered to contribute to their fullest potential.
4. Understand the importance of rest
“Resilience is a muscle that needs to be worked like any muscle to build strength,” Pollen said. “A key ingredient of practicing resilience is knowing how to rest and restore, just like any strength or conditioning work where rest days are incredibly important.”
When employees are depleted or de-energized, it is tough to have the mental capacity needed for resilience. You will need to take a close look at how you encourage and empower rest and restore throughout your organization.
5. Recognize the importance of diversity and inclusion for resilience
Pollen noted the importance of diversity and inclusion to building resilience.
A diverse and inclusive workforce unites varied perspectives, experiences and skills, crucial for innovation, creativity, and problem-solving. It allows organizations to tackle challenges from different angles, leading to stronger solutions. Inclusion makes employees feel valued and respected, boosting their engagement and sense of belonging. This environment fosters open expression, adaptability and continuous learning.
You will want to pay attention to how effective your diversity and inclusion strategies are.
6. Monitor, Evaluate and Adapt
Regularly monitor the implementation of your resilience plan and evaluate its impact. Use feedback from employees and performance data to identify areas for improvement. Be prepared to adapt your strategy in response to new challenges or insights, ensuring your resilience initiatives remain relevant and effective.
In summary, it is wise to view resilience not as a nice-to-have attribute but as a critical component of your strategic planning. Proactively building resilience will equip your teams with the agility to turn future uncertainties into opportunities for growth and success. Although fostering organizational resilience requires ongoing commitment, the payoff in terms of employee flourishing, future readiness and competitive advantage are immense and invaluable. So, embrace the challenge of building resilience today, and lay the foundation for the success of tomorrow!
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