Resilience in the Workplace: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get It

Photo by Kei Scampa

Resilience in the workplace has become an increasingly popular topic over the past few years. What exactly is resilience, though? Is it something that can be taught? And why should you care about your own or your employees’ resilience at work? The more you know about this important work-related skill, the more you’ll understand why it’s so crucial to employee engagement and productivity, as well as to your bottom line. Here’s what you need to know about resilience in the workplace, including how to determine if you need more of it and how to get it.

What is it?
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from setbacks. When employees can turn disappointments into opportunities for growth, they become more engaged at work. So if you want to strengthen your workplace culture and boost employee engagement, it’s important to foster resilience. But what exactly is resilience? How does one obtain this? Read on!

Why does it matter?
Resilience is one of those skills that we never really notice until it’s missing. If you want to keep your employees engaged and invested long term, you need to cultivate resilience in yourself and your team. Employees with poor resilience have 55 per cent lower engagement at work (as measured by Gallup’s Q12 metric) and are 42 per cent less likely to want to stay with their employer. When you consider how many people hold each type of position on an average team, these effects are pretty substantial.

Things you can do - and encourage others to do - to build resilience

1. Never ignore problems. If you have a problem you need to address it as soon as possible, no matter how difficult it may seem. If something is bothering you or making your job harder than it needs to be then don’t hold it inside. Getting any issues out in the open will not only help fix them but will also make you feel more empowered and confident at work.
2. Learn from mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up over mistakes, instead use them as opportunities to grow. Mistakes are an inevitable part of life and learning from them will make you stronger and more resilient in future situations where they might occur again.
3. Embrace change. Resilient people don’t see change as a threat; instead, they recognise that life is one long series of events that will lead them down different paths. They accept that change happens—but it’s their response to those changes that matters. Think about how you handle change. Do you become stressed or anxious? Do you try to maintain as much stability as possible?
4. Self care. Taking time to tend to your own needs and feelings is essential. Just like any muscle—your body or mind—if you don’t regularly use it, it loses strength. Regularly practicing self-care is a must. This might mean taking time to meditate or unplugging from work entirely for a weekend away. As much as people talk about balance and mindfulness, it’s not something that will just happen naturally; you have to cultivate it and maintain it yourself.
5. Build connections. Focus on building strong, positive relationships with loved ones and friends who you know will listen without judgment or criticism. If you’re feeling stressed out, turn to a trusted friend or family member for help—if they can’t help, they might know someone who can.
6. Check in with yourself. It doesn’t have to involve a bunch of reflective exercises or workshops. It can just be as simple as stopping to think about how things are going. Take a few moments during your day—whether it’s in between meetings, waiting for a coffee or when you first arrive at your desk—to think about how you feel right now. Are you enjoying what you’re working on? How are your interactions with others going?
7. Focus on the positive. At one point or another, we’ve all known someone who’s pessimistic about the future or their chances of success. But what is it—and why is it so harmful? Resilient people see a challenge as an opportunity to learn something new or practice a strength they didn’t know they had. They tend to have an optimistic outlook; setbacks don’t get them down for long.

In summary
There are lots of things you can do to build resilience. Its really worth it. Improving your level of resilience will make you a more engaged employee, improve your relationships with others, and leave you with a greater sense of wellbeing. All of these factors have been linked to workplace performance – not just your engagement but also things like teamwork skills or creativity. This means that becoming more resilient can boost not just your own productivity but also that of your whole team.