NHS Wellbeing Week: Resilience in the workplace

Being stressed at work is often a natural part of working life, but being highly stressed and unable to cope with it will bring about difficult times.

Which is why encouraging resilience is an important aspect of any workplace. 

Working in the NHS can be challenging, and employees need to be resilient to cope with the demands of their roles. 

If you're resilient, you will bounce back from any setbacks and come back stronger. Poor resilience leads to the same issues popping up repeatedly.

Let’s explore resilience and what is needed to improve it in your workplace.

What is resilience?

The ability to respond to pressure, deal with adversity, and overcome challenges. Resilience is an important attribute and one which can be learned and improved upon.

Building resilience at work doesn’t have to be tough, and it doesn’t have to be difficult - here, we’ll touch upon a resilience in the workplace definition, the importance of the concept, and some basic tips on making your teams, and yourself, more resilient.

What is emotional resilience?

Throughout our lives, we will probably encounter many situations which will cause symptoms of stress, anxiety and sometimes depression. If you can get through these situations, coping well and keeping yourself afloat, you have strong emotional resilience. And this is a positive in the workplace.

When you have strong emotional resilience you have the ability to not only “bounce back” from setbacks, but have the ability to adapt in the face of challenging circumstances, while maintaining stable mental wellbeing.

If you lack emotional resilience, you may dwell on problems, become easily overwhelmed or rely on unhealthy coping mechanisms. And of course, it’s difficult to give 100% in all aspects of life when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Emotional resilience is about taking stock of the things that need to be done, and figuring out the best ways to deal with them in as stress-free a manner as possible - and knowing your limits, and those of the surrounding people.

How to build mental resilience

Embrace change - an essential tool in developing your resilience, being flexible will help you become better equipped to respond when faced with a life crisis.

• Social network—sharing your problems with someone in your support network won’t fix anything immediately. However, it allows you to share your feelings, get support, receive positive feedback and discover possible solutions to your problems.
• Look after yourself—eating a healthy diet, engaging in regular physical activity, ensuring you have plenty of sleep - all of these things will help you develop a resilient mindset. If you want to try something new, yoga, meditation and deep breathing are all associated with developing mental resilience.
• Think short term—resilient people have the ability to reassure themselves that stressful situations do not last forever and that the associated negative feelings will eventually dissipate. The ability to establish goals will also help you view these situations in a realistic way and then set reasonable goals to deal with the problem.
• Ask for help—many people believe that being resilient is to be mentally strong enough to take on challenges alone. But in fact, the ability to know when to reach out to others for support is a key component of being resilient.

Resilience in the workplace training

‘Resilient’ is a little bit of a daunting word. If you or your teams seem to need a little help with resilience, there is professional, actionable help available - you don’t need to figure out how to become more resilient on your own.

This month Health Assured offer a free webinar - The Road to Resilience - where you can learn, in a remote setting, exactly how to manage pressure and expectation, recognise weaknesses and build upon strength. By the end of the course, you’ll be stronger, wiser - and much more resilient.

Get help from Health Assured with resilience

Having wellbeing resources, such as our EAP or wellbeing app, you can support your employee’s wellbeing, helping them live happier, healthier lives.