Planning for the Future: Building Up Employee Resilience

A business continuity plan (BCP) keeps facilities, processes, and corporate information secure. But it’s through a resilient workforce that companies overcome and recover from crises of all sorts of severity. A resilient workforce is a critical element necessary to overcome challenges and recover from disasters swiftly. Follow the below advice to learn how to ensure long-term employee resilience.

Recognize the Importance of Employee Resilience

The first step to ensuring long-term company resilience is recognizing the degree to which employees contribute to business continuity. Staff is a company’s greatest asset. How staff performs under stress or during a crisis determines the business effectiveness of a company. When staff performance is compromised because employees lack the resilience necessary to overcome challenges, day-to-day operations can become affected.

Conversely, a resilient workforce plows through a crisis and embraces change, learning from their experience how to work more efficiently under stressful situations.

Flexibility and adaptability are at the core of workforce resilience. They let employees dodge potentially negative impacts and evolve within the context of a crisis. Flexibility and adaptability help staff refine existing processes to deliver better results.

Business resilience can therefore be defined as:

• Adaptability to change
• Ability to execute effectively during a crisis
• Capacity to recover from setbacks

Nurture a Culture of Resilience

Although resilience comes naturally to many people, this trait can be taught and acquired through workshops and changes in attitudes. When employees develop their resilience, they can more easily recover from setbacks, adapt to changes, and learn from stressful situations.

Companies should adopt and nurture a culture of resilience to maintain high-level operational readiness. Unfortunately, only 10% of employees ascribe their resilience to company practices.

Leaders should build an environment where employees aren’t inhibited by social barriers and can focus on open and constructive analysis. This approach helps develop a mindset where setbacks are viewed as learning opportunities, not failures.

Leaders can be proactive in building a resilient workforce by using a variety of approaches.

How to build resilience:

• Organize workshops for employees. During workshops, the employees will explore work-related stressors and learn how to overcome them. Workshops also help the employees develop emotional agility, which helps them better react to stressful stimuli.
• Provide support. Develop employee-support plans in case of disasters (e.g., offering housing, financial support, advice, and professional development). Support plans introduce a sense of stability and calm among employees, further contributing to their resilience.
• Include workforce resilience into the BCP. Resilience-building programs should be an integral part of your business continuity plan.

Again, employees are businesses’ most important assets. Their well-being and resilience to stress and crises are the basic building blocks necessary to maintain operational stability regardless of circumstances and severity.

Develop a Framework for Employee Resilience

Aside from organizing workshops and providing support, you can also establish a framework for boosting employee resilience. Everyday actions and integrated communication strategy aid in building resilience.

• Breathe a sense of purpose. Explain what the company does and how it influences the customers and communities. A sense of purpose helps employees work more effectively.
• Help employees connect. Develop a dedicated network where employees can communicate with each other freely and support one another.
• Instill ownership among staff. Accountability encourages staff to take the initiative and increases performance. Giving employees more control and autonomy can boost their productivity and engagement, which in turn results in greater resilience.
• Be an example. With calm and decisive leadership that resonates with staff, the critical traits spread along the chain of command. When leaders set a good example, staff can absorb resilience techniques and skills naturally.

Adjust the framework to the context of your business and industry. To employ the resilience framework successfully, communicate with your staff and explain in plain words the reasons why resilience is important. Also, outline potential future gains achieved by acquiring resilience.

When employees see value and purpose behind adopting new processes, they are more likely to embrace change.

Remember, it is better to cultivate a culture of resilience and resilience framework to yield desired results for long-term endeavors.

Build a Resilient Workforce to Strengthen Company Operations

A resilient workforce means employees retain their productivity under pressure. They’re eager and open to accept changes and challenges, viewing them as ways to improve overall performance. A comprehensive BCP backed by business continuity tools like a board portal and a resilient workforce will help your company sail through major crises with minimum losses.