A large-scale survey on the state of Britain, carried out by The Young Foundation, was published a few weeks ago. I won’t go into the detailed findings of the report, but I would like to highlight one of its key messages about personal resilience:
“Resilience matters and can be influenced. Everyone is bound to face shocks and setbacks at some point in life. But what makes the difference is how well we cope with these shocks, how well we bounce back. This is in part a matter of social support from family and friends, teachers or GPs, as well as skills and financial assets. But resilience – and psychological fitness in a broader sense – can also be learned, and enhanced.”
(‘Sinking and swimming: understanding Britain’s unmet needs’, p. 249)
As regular readers will know, my university spin-off company Robertson Cooper is increasingly looking at this powerful psychological phenomenon with clients – linking resilience with success and performance at work. The above passage contains a key message and mirrors our thinking closely.
While this report is a study of Britain at the societal level, the idea that resilience can be learned and enhanced is an important one for the workplace as well. People genuinely differ in terms of their natural reaction to hurdles and setbacks – think about people you know – but worthwhile development work can be done to improve these reactions in everyone.
Indeed, many organisations that have strategic, cohesive, holistic and successful well-being programmes are addressing the psychological resilience of their workforce, as well as the physical. And we already know that businesses that invest in the well-being of their workforce are more successful than those that do not, but the definition of well-being must be broad enough to go beyond physical well-being.
I lose count of the number of times I hear of examples of organisations who put in place initiative after initiative and still have no success: “People are not using the discounted gym memberships;” “Hardly anyone has signed up for the walking club;” “The healthy options we introduced in the cafeteria are not being eaten. Neither are the fruit baskets.” Like any initiative, the investment can be less than effective (at best) and wasted (at worst) if it is not well thought-through and integrated. Another barrier is when those involved are not ready to change.
The most resilient people have adaptive strategies for dealing with and overcoming setbacks – when things go wrong they are constructive about why it happened and proactively look for ways to do better next time. That’s great for them and for the business, but also suggests that the most resilient people are more likely to seek out and make use of traditional well-being initiatives in the workplace. This may help to make them more successful and the investment more “worthwhile”, but we also have to make provision to build positivity and resilience in those who are not naturally that way inclined. This is not about toughening people up so we can give them more work; it’s about helping people to deliver better quality and to be in a position to play a full role in organisational life.
Important lessons can be drawn from this work by the Young Foundation, and from the wider research base on resilience. If you have an interest in the areas of well-being and resilience, I’d encourage you to take a look at the report.
For the full research report from the Young Foundation, go to: http://www.youngfoundation.org/files/images/YF_needsreport_screen.pdf).
