Helping your staff build resilience at work is an important way to develop your team.
There is no doubt that the workplace can be challenging at times.
Stress can be caused by many factors including tight deadlines, lack of resources, organisational change, personality conflicts, and demanding customers – which can then affect team member productivity and morale.
Why is resilience at work important?
As discussed in this TED Talk by Angela Lee Duckworth, ‘grit’ or perseverance (which both lead to, and are the result of resilience) is the key to success in school, business and life.
Grit requires resilience to ride the waves of our ever-changing and unpredictable world. With today’s innovation and technology, the nature of work in many industries is changing rapidly. And as the last few years of Covid has shown all of us, things out of our control can impact us at any time in unforeseen ways.
Resilience means having a growth mindset and a commitment to learn from failure and being wrong; and the ability to start again with lessons learned.
Research shows that the way we react and perceive events will determine the level of stress we experience. The same thing happening to two individuals may be perceived in different ways, leading to two very different outcomes (think of redundancy for example, which can be perceived by some as failure, or others as a welcome opportunity to create a new path).
How do you know if your team members are resilient?
There are many physical and emotional symptoms of stress, which may be observed through behaviours at work.
If you have team members showing signs of stress such as:
• changed mood (unusually sad, angry, agitated, or ‘flat’)
• reduced productivity, despite being busy
• frequent absences due to physical or mental illness
• ‘presenteeism’ (being physically at work, but not switched on)
… they may benefit from a boost to their resilience.
How can I help my team build resilience at work?
The nature of work in most businesses and organisations will provide many opportunities for team members to develop resilience.
As a business leader, you can help your team members build resilience at work by providing them resilience skills training.
Our Build Resilience At Work workshop will educate your team on what causes stress from a physiological and cognitive perspective, so they can recognise their own stress reactions.
We will teach your team to:
• Understand why humans have a negativity bias and may avoid change
• Appreciate change as an essential part of growth in business and life
• Recognise how technology can both exacerbate and assist with building resilience
• View ‘failure’ as simply feedback
• Challenge their own perceptions and reframe what things mean to them
• Identify negative thought patterns and manage their thought processes
• Keep an open mind to new situations
• Overcome challenges using a simple six-step formula.
They’ll learn how to maintain work/life balance by:
• Using simple time and priority management skills
• Employing a routine or ritual to separate work and home time
• Identifying whether they are an introvert or extrovert, and how to recharge accordingly
• Engaging in physical and mental relaxation
While there may be little you can do to stop work stressors such as organisational change from occurring, you can ensure your team have the opportunity to develop skills to deal with them.
For most people, stress occurring in their home lives impacts their work performance. Investing in resilience training will see your staff benefit on a personal, as well as professional level.
We’ve had the opportunity to develop resilience workshops specifically for the needs of many organisations experiencing periods of organisational change, including the RAAF and Revenue NSW.
If you’d like your team members to build resilience at work, get in touch. We’ll tailor a workshop specifically for your needs.