Resilience in The Workplace

The workplace will always have challenges. There will be trying times or moments where employees and managers need to improve so the business can succeed.

This can cause stress and other issues with workplace pressure. 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.

If your workplace is resilient, they 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 in the workplace?

The ability to respond to pressure, deal with adversity, and overcome challenges—this is resilience at work. 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.

Resilience in the workplace examples

What are some examples of resilience at work? Weathering a storm, bouncing back from adversity, seeing off challenges with stoicism and grit—these are brief, metaphorical resilience at work examples.

To give a couple of slightly less metaphorical examples:

• A manager loses two key staff in a week. They get through the advertising and recruiting part of replacing those staff while keeping their workload manageable
• Someone loses out on a big contract—and uses what they learned about the process to outweigh the negatives, learning from the whole experience

These are examples of resilience at work, from two sides of the coin. Resilience is about capability and capacity for learning.

What is emotional resilience in the workplace?

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, such as suffering a bereavement, serious illness or being made redundant, 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 such as alcohol or excessive eating. And of course, it’s difficult to give 100% in all aspects of life when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Emotional resilience in the workplace 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

Building personal resilience in the workplace

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.

Health Assured offer a great training course—The Road to Resilience—in which teams and managers 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

Itis your responsibility to look after your employee’s wellbeing at work. If you don’t, you will face legal consequences, see your best employees leave, and experience decreased productivity.

Building resilience in the workplace will help employees manage stress, maintain a positive work-life balance, and be able to cope with any mental health challenges.

Having wellbeing resources, such as an EAP or our wellbeing app, you can support your employee’s wellbeing and keep productivity high.

Want to find out more about developing resilience in the workplace? Book a free consultation with one of our wellbeing consultants. Call 0844 891 0353 for ideas on promoting health and wellbeing at work.