Welcome back to the Pathway Blog! We’re happy to have you here, and we’re looking forward to discussing something we find incredibly important when it comes to the health of your workplace: 

Resilience.

Webster’s Dictionary defines “resilience” as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” You can probably see how that would be useful in any type of work environment – whether in an office, a hospital, or a corporate setting!

Every day, we’re presented with situations that don’t go as planned — and that can range from minute details to a total derailment of what you had hoped for. Training your organization to bounce back quickly from these changes can greatly improve efficiency, morale, and productivity. 

Why focus on resilience?

Being able to recover from change and obstacles in a timely, healthy, rational way can have many benefits to your workplace, and can create dramatic change for the better. While it might seem like a tedious undertaking, focusing some of your energy on helping your staff build up resilience can result in:

• Improved communication between team members
• Increased overall morale
• Creativity in problem-solving
• Career longevity (lowered turnaround)
• Higher employee engagement 

How do you help your organization become more resilient?

Guiding your organization to build up its resilience is a matter of care, patience, and understanding. Helping your staff understand what resilience is and how it can help them is a great start, but one of the best ways to do it is by showing them that their leaders are willing to support them in it. 

Show support for your staff’s physical health.

This can range from something small (like a fitness or hydration challenge with incentives attached) to a larger undertaking like improvement in healthcare benefits or providing free gym memberships. The main point is that studies have shown a link between physical health and people’s abilities to achieve and maintain mental resilience. Offering ways for your staff to improve their health can have many benefits, both long and short-term.

Encourage breaks.

It’s nothing new to hear of employees skipping their breaks in order to get more work done or appear more dedicated to their duties. In recent years, however, it’s becoming increasingly clear that skipping breaks can lead to employee burnout — which will cost your company far more than those extra minutes of work would have saved. Make sure that your staff has breaks built into their days, and make an effort to encourage your staff to take those breaks. 

Teach staff to reframe negative situations. 

While the above strategies are more environmental than action-oriented, this step takes a more direct approach. Teaching your organization’s members to reframe situations is one of the best ways to help them build resilience, but this does take patience and coaching. If your staff can look at a mistake, negative situation, or obstacle as a challenge to overcome and grow from, rather than something devastating, they will eventually learn to innovate through problems and recover from them more quickly. Help them look at their obstacles from a different perspective, and guide them as they come up with solutions to improve their situation.

Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Building resilience takes time and deliberate effort, but the benefits have the potential to propel your organization to a higher level of productivity and positivity. Have more questions about resilience, and how your company could benefit from it? Head on over to our contact page — we’d love to chat!