Google recently started sharing short training videos on resilience to ensure their employees take proper care of their mental wellness.
According to the definition, resilience is defined as the ability to recover or withstand any sort of change or misfortune. Not every individual can withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.
We’re all aware of the COVID-19 crisis, a pandemic that brought the world to a standstill. The impact was so large it started impacting the mental wellness of employees at large. Therefore, resilience is said to be a desirable trait that has gained momentum amid the pandemic.
2021 is already here, and HR professionals have started implementing strategies to make life at work more engaging and interesting while improving resilience.
- A study called the ‘Global Workplace 2020’ by ADP Research Institute also shows that employees are 13.2X likely to be resilient whenever any type of disruption at the workplace takes place. Thus, resilience at the workplace has become a desirable skillset HR leader are anticipating in the year to come.
- In a report by Aon, it was mentioned that nearly 86% of resilient employees stated they were highly motivated while a mere 44% of employees identified as non-resilient said they were highly motivated. The report also reveals that only 30% of employees are resilient in the present day. The data collected was from a survey whose participants belonged to Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Netherland.
In the present situation, resilience becomes a core skill in workplaces. Especially, ever since the pandemic struck, the way we work has changed and skills have evolved. Employers are going through multiple transitional phases while trying to find the right approach. Thus, such processes may even take years – employees will need to have the strength and resilience to overcome such obstacles to maintain their performance.
Resilience: The key to the workplace in 2021
The old working world thrived on efficiency and predictability. But with COVID-19, this is not the case anymore. Talent managers are now focused on making resilience at workplaces to help us embrace the change.
Being resilient will help us grow forward, it can help us reimagine things that are unpredictable and not avoid them. Some people even say that by being resilient we’re already imbibing well-being within ourselves.
Being able to inhibit resilience within oneself can decrease the stress level by 37%, Insights from the Global AQ* 2019 Study.
To be precise, you will find two key drivers of resilience in the workplace.
- Learn how to foster resilience – doing so helps build self-confidence. Demonstrating self-confidence allows employees to become more optimistic.
- Recognition – recognition plays a crucial role in the workplace. It is a basic human need. Every employee deserves a pat on the back from time to time, and not just save for special occasions. And recognition should be for all generations and ages, recognition can be a value-added behavior and personal achievement and not just something people think millennials have cooked up.
Going forward to welcoming the year 2021, here’s what every organization needs to add to its talent development portfolio:
- Helping every organization develop the right ecosystem that will help talent become more resilient and continue to do so whenever an unprecedented situation occurs.
- Help foster resilience development opportunities toward talent, every budding leader, and leadership.
- Develop behavioral change intervention to help people see that the value of change is much greater than the investment that is required.
Besides this, organizations must also start building ways through which they can introduce resilience into organizational practices such as –
- Build a learning culture and try to sustain it.
- Building compatible talent pools.
- Develop programs toward building appropriate leadership competencies.
- Open opportunities for people to build competencies to demonstrate their skills.
- Provide a safe environment for learning wherein people can learn quickly.
- Include job rotation programs.
- Provide job enlargement opportunities.
- Create programs for mentorship and reverse mentorship.
- Empower mid-level leaders to help them make quick and better decisions.
As HR professionals grapple with the impact caused by the pandemic, fostering resilience at workplaces has never been important. Also, as remote work becomes the new normal, employers need to strictly consider how they can sustain productivity, employee engagement, and innovation amid the virtual world.
Workplace resilience has always been an important element leading to the success of organizations. But as the pandemic continues to disrupt the way we work and live, the element has become more important than ever.
Development of resilience at the workplace requires more than just hard work. It needs time and resources, but we need to ensure that the investment made today must deliver a favorable reward in return.
Endnote
Although we’ve seen constant development around building mental wellness and resilience at workplaces; the human resource managers and professionals will need to rethink more on their operations in the year to come. The aim of every HR leader must be to teach people how to become more resilient to embrace every unpredictable change coming our way.
