Guide to Building Resilience in the Workplace

Resilience in the Workplace During Uncertain Times

In these uncertain times, resilience in the workplace has never been more important. Company leaders and managers must look after their employees to help them be more resilient, to maintain their confidence and to strive for improvement.
Far too often, organisations take an informal approach to this critical area, or alternatively, end up being reactive rather than proactive.
However, in modern workplaces characterised by staff cutbacks, deadlines, rivalry and organisational change, success relies on an individual’s capacity to cope and even thrive when faced with stress.

What is resilience at work?

Broadly speaking, resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ when encountering the challenges that are an inevitable part of life. Resilient people are also flexible, adapt to new and different situations, learn from experience, are optimistic and ask for help when they need it.
The workplace presents a different range of stressors to employees, especially with COVID-19 impacting every aspect of our lives. The exciting thing about resilience is that it is a skill, and like any skill, with practice, resilience can be learned.
Below we will highlight eight key focus areas, along with some guidance that will assist you with supporting resilience in the workplace.
We will also outline how you can harness our next generation technology to better prioritise, inspire, and reward your resilient employees through our suite of value added services.

Resilience training with EonX

Take a top-down approach

If an organisation is to succeed in an increasingly challenging marketplace, it needs to put resilience first and foremost throughout the workforce. New strategies will have to be introduced, and this process will start at the management level.
Senior people within the organisation must redefine the status quo to support all their downline employees in the search for resilience. With a stronger management team, the organisation itself will become more resilient.
Subsequently, the first step to building resilience in the workplace is to allocate the necessary resources towards prioritising teaching your employees integral personal skills, not just professional skills.
EonX’s Rec Room delivers an all-in-one employee engagement, recognition and communication platform that is fully customisable to suite company values and objectives. This enables organisations to embed the solution with specific engagement rules, that can be used to emphasise and encourage actions that align with resilient behaviours.

Provide digital resilience training and support

In order to support resilience in the workplace, managers need to make digital resilience tools available to their workers as part of a comprehensive workplace package.
Such tools should include workshops, training, online resources, articles and meditations. These tools will empower employees with access to new perspectives, aiding them to more resiliently handle themselves both inside and outside of the workplace.
EonX’s Health & Wellness platform can be used in conjunction with Rec Room, to provide employees with access to a variety of resources, like to those mentioned above. Together, these platforms will deliver customised learning and performance based modules, training and development, Quizzes and Polls, as well as blogs, articles, meditations and much more.
This will not only drive resilience in the workplace, but will allow organisations to enhance their brand message with personalised, emotional, and relevant timely communications.

Train leaders to lead the pack with resilience in the workplace

It’s important to train department or line managers to be effective leaders that can show others how to be resilient. To be a good leader, they must understand both emotional and business concepts, learn how to walk-the-talk in their own behaviours and explicitly coach for resilience.
They need to help build resilience in constructive ways, rather than taking the alternative route and destroying confidence. As they do, employees will become stronger, more engaged, and less likely to drop out. This will lead to higher staff retention rates and a stronger, more resilient workforce.
Organisations can utilise Rec Room’s Group function to establish a private central location where management can connect one another and conduct leadership training. Here, relevant resources can be shared and Quizzes and Polls can be created and leveraged to determine how well the information has been retained. Colleagues can ‘Nominate’ or “Hi-5” those who are taking well to the training, ensuring the experience is fun and engaging. With many management teams now separated and working remotely, this solution brings convenience and purpose to leadership teams.
Implement employee goal setting to build resilience in the workplace Employees should be prompted to create a series of targets that are both personal and professional. For example, to get a minimum of eight hours of sleep at night and to deliver a strong presentation at work.
Goal setting provides two key benefits – firstly, goal setting allows time for reflection which helps employees to become more self-aware. Secondly, achieving goals triggers feelings of satisfaction which can boost motivation and overall engagement with daily tasks. Both of these work together and create the foundations for resilience.
Rec Room and the Health & Wellness platform, allow employees to create and set their own wellness goals via the platform. These goals can be monitored by management, and used in conjunction with professional goals to help employees along their path. An employee’s performance and engagement with their goals can be monitored in real-time via the platform. Employers can use this information to track how well employees are working towards building their personal skill set (including resilience) as well as professional.

Deliver weekly resilience tips

Employers can also send out weekly advice on how to better approach problems and manage work effectively. Sharing tips and tricks or even inspirational quotes can be used to help with mindfulness which is essential when dealing with pressurised situations.
By sharing personal anecdotes, employees can learn how to redefine and reframe issues in a more positive light. Employees will appreciate these extra steps, helping them to feel more supported, thereby enabling them to build stronger trust within the business. Employees will be more likely to be loyal to the company as a consequence.
Rec Room’s News Feed can host these weekly tips, allowing all members of the organisation to ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ and ‘Share’ their own thoughts and ideas. This will help to build a culture of resilience and act as a reminder to behave more mindfully throughout the day.

Recognise and reward resilience in the workplace

Recognition for employees is a proven motivator and influencer on performance. As employees improve, their progress should be recognised and subsequently rewarded. This will act as an integral step to reinforce resilient behaviour, helping them to feel more valued and motivated to continue with their efforts.
This can be achieved through Rec Room, as employees will be able to earn Points, Custom Badges, Rewards, Awards and personalised Work Perks as they improve and successfully embody resilience in the workplace. Organisations can align these reward mechanisms with company values and objectives, helping to incentivise and engage employees so that they can remain happy, connected, and resilient.

Encourage team spirit

Organisations work better when there’s team spirit.
Team spirit is where enthusiasm and resilience meet, shining positive, vibrant energy on life’s peaks and troughs. Collectively, employees can incorporate team spirit by setting team goals and challenges to help them all move forward, together.
EonX’s Health & Wellness platform can be harnessed to host interactive challenges to help employees improve their fitness levels and build a sense of comradery. Here, users have the ability to track their activity and share results with friends and colleagues. This will empower employees to not only be more resilient, but to help support and challenge one another to do the same.

Getting more information…

EonX has become the ‘go-to’ strategic and tactical partner, developing ecosystems that enrich employee experiences and drive engagement like never before.
The experienced team in our full-service agency, is ready to assist you in building resilience in the workplace, through our suite of Engagement, Recognition and Loyalty platforms. Rest assured, we can provide a practical, wholistic and tech driven approach to employee resilience.
If you want to find out more about EonX and its revolutionary approach in this area, get in touch today.