Building a Resilient Workforce
It’s pretty obvious with the events of this year particularly with COVID-19 that you want to ensure you continue to have a resilient workforce for business continuity and performance. I have also spoken before about resilience. It is the power or ability to return to the original form after being bent, compressed or stretched, elasticity. It’s the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness. Or the ability to rebound. I spoke about resilience being the answer to a lot of the workplace issues at work; conflict, grievances, bullying, mental health, terminations, redundancies, stress change and the list goes on….. If staff were more resilient, they could brush off things that would otherwise affect them or as they say ‘bounce back’ quicker. And wasn’t this the year to have a resilient workforce!
A resilient workforce is able to assess situations and work accordingly, come up with new ideas, help the organisation drive forward during difficult times, cope with workplace stress well and more. Many employees actually did seem resilient, working from home when required. This coupled with businesses also working hard to ensure their mental health and well-being and the two worked together well to ensure continuity of business and individual performance.
To build or improve a resilient workforce, if you don’t don’t believe you team are or could improve you can look at things like; training through facilitated group sessions to promote cohesion, debriefing sessions after any challenge or stressful event to encourage reflection & how employees coped and work on culture to promote resilience. It’s also important for employees to be encouraged to; remain positive, work on continual growth and development, trust and open communication & relationships, focus on the vision and goals of the business and if you refer to the PERMA Model you would add employee engagement through meaningful, challenging and enjoyable work.
Individuals need to also take responsibility for their resilience and hopefully, through training, they can develop skills and strategies to be able to do this. Some ways can be through identifying what they can and can’t influence, positive thinking to stop unhelpful thinking habits, being able to reframe concerns into opportunities, being optimistic, exercise, rest, healthy diet, mindfulness & relaxation, providing and accepting support.
Building resilient employees is another way HR Business Direction help clients get a ROI from their people and creating work environments that support and prevent mental health, allowing us to make a true difference in society – for businesses and individuals.
Contact us here for more information.
Leisa Messer BBus(HRM); GradDipIR; CAHRI; IRSQ
Managing Director | HR Strategist
leisa.messer@hrbd.com.au
07 3890 2066
www.hrbd.com.au