Psychological resilience is an individual’s capability to endure and bounce back from adversities without any serious harm to his or her psychological state. Resilience was, until recently, seen as a personal attribute but it is fast becoming a skill crucial to workplace success.
Significance of Psychological Resilience in the Workplace
Why is psychological resilience important in a workplace?Any incident or stressful situation that makes an individual feel overwhelmed and leaves him or her feel incapable of addressing and managing assigned responsibility can be psychologically harmful.
Any situation that puts an individual’s safety or life at risk can put the individual’s mental health at risk. This is especially significant for people working in high-risk jobs such as, inter alia, law and security personnel, first responders, researchers and investigative journalists.
Such stresses and incidents are many in the modern workplace. In addition to daily stresses, there are serious incidents such as bullying, sexual harassment and humiliation which can have a negative impact on the psychology of an individual.
Good psychological resilience empowers an individual with the strength to withstand and survive daily workplace stresses as well as intense incidents without undergoing mental harm.
Emphasising the need for psychological resilience is the research that says that stressful workplaces pose risk for both employees and organisations by adversely impacting physical and mental well-being.
Benefits of a Resilient Workplace
A resilient workplace witnesses the following benefits:
- A productive work environment
- Happier teams that are better equipped to handle different kinds of stresses
- A positive work culture
- Increased employee engagement
- High employee job satisfaction
- Improved employee rapport
- A workforce with a positive self-esteem and greater confidence
- Better individuals with the practical know-how to balance their personal and professional lives
- A successful and progressive organisation that does not fear change and thrives in a challenging environment
How Resilience Empowers Individuals in High-Stress Workplace Environments
- Enables employees to manage the stress of long work hours, shift work, colleague conflicts, job insecurity and lack of social support.
- Develops ability in your employees to identify, prevent or battle mental conditions such as anxiety and depression. According to research, individuals working in stressful workplaces are at higher risk of developing anxiety and depression.
- Decreases the chances of employees resorting to drugs and alcohol as a way to manage stress levels.
- Safeguards employees against emotional burnout.
How Organisations Can Contribute to Increased Resilience at Workplace?
Many organisations have been successful in building a resilient workforce by developing a healthy work culture where employees thrive. Strong commitment toward employee resilience building is important on the part of an organisation.
Here are some ways in which you can build a resilient workforce in your organisation:
- Know the Challenges your Employees are Facing
Employees can be better at overcoming obstacles when they are well-equipped, be it by way of more resources, moral motivation, or other means. In order to make them well-equipped, it is essential to know their needs. The first step, therefore, is to understand the difficulties faced by your employees.
There are many ways to gather information about employee challenges. A direct approach where employees convey their difficulties to managers directly may be possible in an open culture.
If your employees desire a more discreet approach, you could conduct surveys where they can express their needs anonymously. Mental health questions could be made part of your organisation’s annual health risk assessments to gather such information.
Once information is available, you can develop a customised plan.
- Involve Senior Leaders
Getting the leadership team involved is key to making your organisation’s resilience-building strategy a success. It is only when leadership demonstrates strong commitment toward building a resilient workforce will a workforce show acceptance and enthusiasm for a strategy.
Additionally, a leadership team is crucial for setting goals, motivating employees, and measuring success, in an employee resilience-building initiative. Lastly, leaders must believe in resilience and experience its benefits to build and nurture a resilient team.
Given these reasons, it is important to involve leadership as a primary step in building and nurturing a resilient work culture.
If your leadership team is unwilling to come onboard, then sharing stress, employee mental health and needs data can usually persuade them to join the initiative.
Be Flexible
A flexible work environment is one that makes things easier for employees and contributes to their accomplishments.
Here are some ways to make your organisation flexible:
- Recognise and reward good employee performances
- Let employees take control where possible. Avoid micro-managing
- Permit flexible work schedules. Work-from-home permissions and allowance for convenient shift rotations are some examples.
- Provide facilities that help employees develop their physical and mental health. Regular corporate training or therapy programmes and access to fitness centres are some examples.
Convey information and updates regarding such facilities to employees regularly so that they can make the best use of the facilities.
- Monitor reality and adjust your productivity expectations accordingly.
Wiser organisations understand the damaging impact of going overboard with deadlines and productivity levels on employee morale. As a result, they do not pressure employees with unreasonable workload and deadlines.
Provide Psychological Resilience Training
Organisations are increasingly keener on introducing psychological resilience training at workplaces, thanks to the increased success of such training programmes. With resilience becoming a crucial career growth skill, organisations are now willing to invest in continuous resilience training as part of their employee welfare programmes.
Professional companies offer resilience coaching & consultancy either as part of their corporate leadership skills training programme or as an individual service.
Effective psychology-based resilience training programmes usually include the following components:
- Work-related stress management
- Developing good communication skills
- Cultivating good habits that contribute to good physical health
- Managing emotions
- Cultivating good sleeping habits
- Developing the ability to stay calm
Managing difficult people
- Identifying and safeguarding oneself against burnout
- Preventing being intimidated by changes and new challenges
At Pinnacle, we offer psychology-based training therapy that includes a wide range of proven and lasting resilience-building strategies. We have a team of industry-leading experts to provide resilience training, coaching & consultancy.
Organisations looking for an effective rehab programme, leaders looking to build a resilient workforce, and organisations looking for immediate support for employees after a critical workplace incident, among others, can benefit from Pinnacle’s industry expertise.
Strive to Develop A Resilient Culture
Resilience needs to be a work culture and not a one-time employee skill imparted only to certain individuals. To be a culture, resilience needs to be cultivated from organisational roots to across divisions and departments.
Such embedding needs strong commitment, patience and resolve, from the organisation. With steely determination, organisations can make resilience a true work culture and not an empty statement.
For the best results, resilience-building must be a preventive strategy rather than a reactionary development.
Pinnacle can support you in achieving your vision of a resilient organisation. We can help you build a resilient workforce with our extensive experience and an expert team of industry professionals. We specialise in creating bespoke training solutions that give lasting results.
Pinnacle is based in Isle of Man and London. Our corporate training and workplace coaching and therapy services are available worldwide.
Visit our website for more information.
Sources:
https://www.workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com/managing-workplace-issues/why-resilience-is-a-workplace-issue
https://positivepsychology.com/resilience-in-the-workplace/
https://fitforwork.org/blog/building-workplace-resilience/
http://workplacementalhealth.org/Mental-Health-Topics/Resilience
