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Building a Resilient Workforce
April 4, 2024
Resilience: Meaning & Essence
Resilience is commonly defined as the ability to ‘bounce back’ after hardship. It is an emotional muscle that must be developed to overcome short-term challenges and maintained to withstand life’s trials. In simple words, workforce resiliency refers to a group of employees who feel stable, secure, and capable of dealing with workplace obstacles, daily stresses, and organizational changes while remaining engaged and motivated. The more resilient a team is, the better equipped they are to manage business changes and industry transformations without becoming frustrated, distrustful, or unclear about the impact of such changes on their lives. Essentially, resiliency creates an opportunity for flexibility.
Workforce resiliency is a critical component of long-term employee retention, as it helps develop and maintain an effective and engaging workplace culture even in challenging situations. Long story short, workforce resilience lies at the core of an effective organizational culture.
Without resiliency, no amount of beer on tap or ping pong table games can stop the employees from leaving! Such is the power of resilience.
The Need & Importance of a Resilient Workforce
As employee requirements, abilities, and attitudes change, organizations must engage in developing a resilient workforce capable of successfully navigating new obstacles and opportunities. Resilient workforces provide positive business outcomes. The increase in resilience of a workforce is directly proportional to client satisfaction, profit margin, innovation, net promoter scores, and staff retention.
To foster resilience, all the areas of employee well-being must be addressed—physical, social, mental, and emotional, work/life, and financial requirements. This also includes creating a human-centered employee value proposition (EVP) that reflects an employer’s beliefs, culture, policies, and perks, leading to a pleasant employee experience.
By prioritizing workforce resilience, businesses can gain an advantage in a rapidly evolving human capital landscape through:
- Enhancement of talent attraction & retention
- Accomplishment of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) objectives
- Reduction of employee turnover
- Minimizing burnout and disengagement
- Overcoming disruption and cultivating an adaptive attitude.
Helping Employees Build Resilience
Organizations can use three-time frames for action to help employees build resilience: Readiness, Response, and Recovery.
- Readiness: In the readiness phase, employers can proactively create a positive experience for their employees and provide resources that help employees manage stress and build resilience. Leaders can play a crucial role in the workforce experience through the development and implementation of certain best practices, such as promoting psychological safety, offering well-being perks and programs, and others.
- Response: In this phase, organizational and leadership action is triggered by crisis, but even at this point, companies can proactively address stress reduction and avoidance. First, leaders should gain an understanding of their specific workforce and how they need to respond effectively. Having understood those demands, they can then encourage workforce resilience through strong leadership and ensure business continuity to the extent possible.
- Recovery: As the employees adjust to a new workplace, their resilience is tested during the recovery phase. In this phase, it is also important to reassure employees that resources will be available to them and that they will feel psychologically safe enough to use them.
Proactive Measures to Build Workforce Resilience
Below are a few organization-level measures that employers can implement to make their workforce resilient.
- Training & Learning: Knowledge is everything in an ever-expanding world. Employees must receive proper training to perform their tasks. The more they understand their function, the more likely they are to attain their long-term objectives and contribute to their success. This is why learning opportunities through training are critical for improving their talents in the long run.
- Sense of Purpose at Work: A job without a purpose appears ambiguous and disheartening. Similarly, if the employees cannot find significance in their work, it impacts their morale and motivation. Therefore, it is essential to check with your personnel and ask if they are satisfied with their work. Encourage them and help them decide about their work. This will drive individuals to find significance in their work, leading to higher productivity and efficiency. In a way, it helps build a more resilient workforce.
- Stress Management: Reducing stress levels should be a combined endeavor between the organization and its personnel. The organization should focus on how it can help employees deal with stress. Simultaneously, employees should speak up about workplace pressures and discuss their concerns with management. Both sides should formulate a plan together that will alleviate the problem and boost efficiency.
- Problem-solving Capabilities: An organization is efficient when its workforce possesses the essential problem-solving abilities. This enhances the resilience of the workforce and prepares them for crisis. To enhance the problem-solving skills of employees, they must understand the situation. The more specialized analytical skills they possess, the better they will be at problem-solving.
Conclusion
Building a future-ready and resilient workforce is critical for organizations to adapt to a rapidly changing business landscape; however, developing such a workforce is an ongoing process that necessitates a strategic and proactive approach focused on continuous learning, agility, collaboration, and employee well-being. Investing in these techniques allows organizations to create a workforce that is better equipped to thrive despite future challenges.
Key Contributor: Geetanjali Negi, Senior Manager – Content/ Research & Sales Enablement
