Revisiting Resilience

Unfortunately, most workplace resilience programs are used as a band-aid to cover up more serious psychosocial issues such as ineffective job design, poor interpersonal culture, poor person-job fit and deficiencies in supportive leadership behaviour. With resilience 'training', it is very easy to give participants a peak experience, make them feel good (for the duration of the course at least) and slightly increase their level of insight. However, facilitating actual sustainable behaviour change and addressing the psychosocial factors that can create excessive stress for staff is beyond the scope of pretty much any half or full day training course, even if your facilitator is amazing.

Want to maximise the impact of the workplace resilience programs provided for your staff? Its actually not that difficult. You just need to be able to answer a few important questions:

·      What psychosocial review was done to determine that resilience training was the best option to use? - or is the actual issue really something like poorly managed change or outdated job design? (sounds a bit harder to get right, doesn’t it!)

 ·      What specific psychological job demands is your course designed to help people meet? - or is it just a ‘toughen up’ activity to get people to do more with less resources?

 ·      What sustainability and learning reinforcement activities are in place to help facilitate long term behaviour change? Rapid regression towards the behavioural mean is typically what occurs after short course training, so how are these new capabilities being embedded?

 ·      What theoretical models of resilience (cognitive, behavioural, strengths –based, positive psychology etc.) underpin the courses you use? I am 47 years old (yes, I am officially a proud mature aged worker), it has taken me 47 years to develop my current neural pathways and learn to think the way I do - if your course claims to be able to make me more positive from now on, change my entire view on the world, or alter my thinking patterns, please supply evidence that it can actually rewire my brain in the 3 or 6 hours allocated to the course, as I suspect my well-worn neural pathways will fight against this notion.

 ·      Who developed the course, who independently reviewed the course, what ‘qualified’ them to do so? – too often resilience courses are just cobbled together by searching doctor google and grabbing a few key phrases from popular speakers and sportspeople. Other courses are developed and delivered based on notions that give no consideration to whether they ‘fit’ your workplace environment. Sure, a world leading sporting star may have overcome adversity and lived a highly rewarding life, but how on earth does their experience (living their one true calling) equate to your staff, whose workplace experience and motivations to be at work are markedly different to an elite sporting great?

 ·      How are you measuring the impact of the resilience training? – please do not say by an after workshop evaluation that asks if they would recommend the course to others or if the facilitator was engaging. I mean, what psychosocial metrics are you using? What measures of behaviour change? If you are using a provider to deliver your courses, they should be able to easily articulate this for you.

In short, workplace resilience programs have become the ‘go to’ courses for the modern era, but in a time where anything remotely ‘mental health’ or ‘wellbeing’ oriented is being monetised with unprecedented gusto, we need to be appropriately cautious. Resilience training can be great, I fully support it, however only if it is well considered, planned, reinforced and evidence-based, and helps people to better meet the demands of their roles. It’s time to do your due diligence on your resilience training, your people are worth it!

#mentalhealth #resilience #wellbeing