What can make your workforce more resilient?

It would be a vast understatement to say that the majority of employees in most businesses throughout the country – and around the world, for that matter – have been under considerable amounts of stress over the course of the past several months. The new coronavirus pandemic and all of the economic uncertainties and difficulties resulting from it took a significant toll, and will continue to do so, even as case numbers drop in some parts of the world and certain companies begin to cautiously reopen.

If your organization hopes to make it through current difficulties, developing resilience in the workforce (as well as with management, and among the C-suite) will be essential. But it can't be a short-term plan intended only to withstand present challenges. Your strategy for creating resilience throughout your team must become an integral part of the company's culture, one that will be well-suited to get you through any sort of crisis or fallow period that might come along in the future.

Defining resilience 
Unlike "business resilience" – a company's capacity to recover from disruptions ranging from supply-chain interruptions to critical equipment failures, as defined by TechTarget – staff resilience refers to team members' ability to withstand crises while upholding their professional responsibilities. It involves more abstract qualities, including but not limited to morale, focus on customer service, versatility and personal commitment to the mission of the organization. With all of that said, however, business resilience (also known as business continuity) can certainly benefit from a staff that is itself resilient, at all levels of the company. 

Determining current resilience levels 
Before embarking on any quests to establish or improve resilience in the workforce, it will be important to determine how much of this quality staff members already possess (or lack, as the case may unfortunately be). The Resilience Institute recommended conducting assessments regarding this characteristic on an individual level.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to go about this: Either you can simply have one-on-one conversations in which you ask workers point blank about their morale and engagement, or use a templated assessment from TRI (or a similar organization) if a more subtle approach is needed. Look over the assessment results in aggregate to develop a general view of how everyone is feeling, searching for patterns (e.g., confidence among account management teams, a grim outlook among sales reps and so on) that will help you know exactly what needs to be worked on.

Providing the right resources and support
You can't expect team members to simply develop or maintain resilience on their own during tough times of any kind. If they don't have the best tools to do their jobs, which could be anything from a reliable laptop to a series of research materials, they're effectively set up to fail through no fault of their own. In a crisis situation like a server failure or sharp downturn in organizational revenue, that failure will resonate even more painfully. As pointed out by Gallup, continually talking about resource needs – and, ultimately, meeting them – is vital for resilience. Providing personal moral support to workers and keeping lines of communication constantly open is also critical.

Encouraging mindfulness 
According to Harvard Business Review, numerous studies have shown that there is great value in mindfulness practices in the workplace, particularly in terms of their ability to bolster resilience. When many people think of mindfulness, they imagine meditation – which can certainly be a valuable aspect of practical mindfulness but is far from its only iteration. Remaining constantly aware of your feelings and surroundings is another important mindfulness task, and so is keeping track of employee workloads and assigning dedicated times of day for specific tasks.

Consider areas where mindfulness could be most beneficial to employees and endeavor to apply them in these contexts. Last but not least, remember that such practices are just as important when your business is in the black as they are during (or after) a major difficult event.

Creating and maintaining balance
There may be fewer breaks to be had, or less downtime that actually feels like a break, when an employee's company (or, as with current circumstances, the world) is experiencing unrest. However, as Positive Psychology noted, those lulls are still critical, as employees who become too tied to work will quickly lose their energy and become burnout risks. Even in the toughest times, every member of your organization must strive for a reasonable degree of work-life balance so they can decompress as needed and then come back more ready than ever to help the company weather any storm.