Employee Resilience

4 mins
Published on December 08th, 2023By Declan Heffernan

What is Employee Resilience?

Keeping on top of mental health in the modern workplace is becoming increasingly important with modern day pressures. Building up a resilience to these pressures is key to protecting yourself from the negativities that can come from working life. Resilience in this context is defined by CIPD as the ability to adapt, cope, gain resources, and respond positively to stressors in the workplace. Employees with high resilience may show the following behaviours:

  • Make calculated decisions
  • Thrive, even as an outsider
  • Stand up to toxic behaviours
  • Remain calm during a crisis
  • Learn quickly from mistakes/ past experiences
  • Handle disappointment well

An evidence review carried out by CIPD, based on a rapid evidence assessment (REA), finds several key factors that protect or reinforce resilience. Looking at what influences resilience in the workplace, it boils down to 2 distinct areas:

  • The individual/psychological state: Our confidence levels, our emotional state and our sense of coherence.
  • Our external relationships: Cohesive relationships and support from our co-workers and management.

Internal/Psychological influences

Both inside and outside of the workplace, the internal factors affecting mental resilience can’t be emphasised enough. It is important to distinguish between the terms resilience and managing stress. Resilience is associated with a true, internalised mental toughness, whereas stress management can still be carried out while someone is experiencing feelings of stress. An important question to ask ourselves: Is having stress management techniques, the same as using techniques to actually keep ourselves free from the feelings of stress and adversity in the first place?

There are a number of steps we can take as employees to keep ourselves free from feelings of stress and general negativity – to improve resilience in the workplace (Healthworkerburnout.com):

  • Remain optimistic and reflective.
  • Celebrate your wins, no matter how small.
  • Use challenges as opportunities to learn new skills.
  • Be realistic when dealing with painful or challenging work situations.
  • Nurture strong relationships with colleagues, friends, and family.
  • Build social support by being active and helpful in your community.
  • Be compassionate with yourself, take good care of your health, and get periodic breaks.
  • Practice meditation or mindfulness to connect more with yourself and restore your sense of purpose.
  • When faced with adversity, take positive action to enhance your self-confidence and sense of control.
  • Set realistic goals to guide you and give your life a sense of purpose—take daily action to move towards these goals.
  • Remember that stress and change are inevitable, so learn positive ways of interpreting and responding to life’s events.

Some people may also be more susceptible to workplace stressors than others based on their individual personality traits. Personality traits are consistently correlated with various indices of acute psychological stress response, including negative emotions and performance impairment (Matthews, G., Lin, J., & Wohleber, R. 2017). In an effort to try and gather some sort of metric for the relationship between an employees’ personality and their levels of resilience we can look at of the five-factor model (Fiske, 1949) which compartmentalises personality traits into 5 categories:

  • Conscientiousness – impulsive, disorganised vs. disciplined, careful
  • Agreeableness – suspicious, uncooperative vs. trusting, helpful
  • Neuroticism – calm, confident vs. anxious, pessimistic
  • Openness to Experience – prefers routine, practical vs. imaginative, spontaneous
  • Extraversion – reserved, thoughtful vs. sociable, fun-loving

A study by Oshio et al (2018), that analysed the relationship between reliance and the ‘big-five’ personality types, concluded the personality trait that had the greatest negative relationship with resilience was Neuroticism and the greatest positive relationship was with Conscientiousness. However, as with all studies based on something as unique as one’s personality, we cannot assume that these results can be applied for all situations, as we humans are very changeable.

External influences

Moving away from the self and looking at what external influences there are affecting workplace resilience, having positive support networks in the fore of working relationships are highly important. Much of this encouraging network starts with the management. As managers, we can look at what we can do to facilitate resilience within our team and within ourselves (CIPD, 2022);

As managers, we can look at whether our relationships within our team are positive. Having a positive relationship with your employees will enable them to manage any work-related stress they may encounter. As a manager, we don’t want to be another stressor for a member of our team to have to navigate, but rather help and facilitate stress management to help promote employee resilience.

We can also implement goal-setting to help to understand what motivates your team. Engaging in both group and individual goal-setting will create both an achievable goal and allow the opportunity for success to be celebrated. These feelings of positivity in relation to work will contribute towards resilience in the long run.

Creating supportive working environments is very important for creating a workplace that facilitates resilience within employees. We can do this by enable employees to lean on each other for support. We can do this through a number of methods;

  • Signposting resources that are available
  • Helping people access guidance and development they need
  • Encouraging members within the team to support one another
  • Role-modelling
  • Emphasising the importance of mutual support

When making these resources available, it is important to keep them managed properly, so that employees can consistently use them. For example, to make sure all communication methods between employees are functional and effective. Ensuring that access to health and wellbeing facilities is accessible to all.

Being mentally resilient in the workplace is a positive attribute, but this comes as a result of being mindful and looking after your (and others) mental and physical wellbeing. Looking after our health and stress levels is absolutely fundamental for longevity and fulfilment. And on a more human level, looking after ourselves and others within our workplace is something that we should all look to do where we can.

https://positivepsychology.com/resilience-in-the-workplace/

https://healthworkerburnout.com/what-is-workplace-resilience-everything-you-need-to-know/

https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/guides/supporting-employee-resilience-line-manager-guide/

Employee resilience: an evidence review | CIPD | CIPD

Managing stress and building resilience – tips – Mind

Personality, stress and resilience: A multifactorial cognitive science perspective. (apa.org)

Resilience and Big Five personality traits: A meta-analysis – ScienceDirect