Organizational success depends on an individual’s ability to cope and thrive when faced with stress situations and changing environments – they need a resilient workforce that can ride the wave and still come out on top. Today’s modern workplace can easily be characterized by staff cutbacks, deadlines, rivalry and organisational change. Companies need employees that can fight the ups and downs that come with each new challenge. More broadly speaking, they need individual’s that can “bounce back” when they encounter challenges, in other words they are resilient towards challenges. Individuals who are resilient are able to deal with life’s curve-balls in a healthy and productive way. The exciting thing about resilience is that it is a life-skill that can be learned – that means with a little practice and development one is able to portray the ability to cope with unexpected challenges and stress as well as know how to thrive during these situations.
Workplace stress is correlated with high levels of depression, anxiety and burnout. Employees experience physical and emotional fatigue and a sense of low personal achievement. Burnout is associated with increased rates of absenteeism and reduced productivity. Resilience on the other hand is associated with numerous positive conditions such as optimism, enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, energy and openness to experience. These positive states are of remarkable value to the workplace and can increase creative solutions and behaviors.
During resilience training in the workplace, 4 broad categories of outcomes can be measured:
1. Mental health and subjective well being outcomes (stress, depression, anxiety, and negative mood/affect/emotion).
2.Physical/biological outcomes
3.Psycho social outcomes
4.Performance outcomes
Resilience training in the workplace may focus on content areas such as:
In conclusion resilience can be seen as making courageous leaps. That means that employees are able to see change as an emerging opportunity or even embracing critics and opposition as a source of new ideas. It is therefore crucial for organization to have the tools to not only survive but also thrive as they move forward through transformation and emerging stressful situations. A change process done right will ensure that employees stay productive and proactive and effectively deal with all the stress and unknown factors involved. Therefore resilient, productive workers are able to translate into company profits due to the fact that they can learn to adapt and are able to accept and move forward with change and stress situations.
