Many organisations and leadership teams are now trying to manage what appears to be a steady increase in employee burnout, stress, absenteeism and general disengagement.
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace found that two-thirds of full-time workers worldwide experience burnout symptoms on the job, and separately, close to three in four U.S. employees report moderate to very high workplace stress.
Employee leaves of absence specifically for mental health reasons increased 300% between 2017 and 2023.
Given all that, it makes sense that “resilience” is a word we’re hearing a lot more of.
For many organisations, there’s a strong feeling that their workforce lacks resilience, is quickly buckling when confronted with any challenge, and struggles to bounce back after setbacks.
Unlike many “hard skills” resilience can be a tough thing to clearly assess when hiring people – what exactly should we be looking for when interviewing candidates? I’m also frequently asked “how can we develop resilience in the employees we already have?”
This guide addresses both of these questions, and serves as a resource to better understand what makes employees resilient, and some of the best proven ways to start develop it in your own teams.
Key Takeaways
- Resilience is a series of different skills that can be developed.
- Emotional intelligence is one of the strongest drivers of workplace resilience.
- Building resilient managers is the fastest way to build resilient teams.
- Self-awareness helps employees recognise and change unhelpful behaviours.
- Challenge builds resilience when it’s matched with the right support.
- Teams that learn from mistakes become more confident and adaptable.
What is employee resilience?
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from setbacks or adversity and have an optimistic and goal focused mindset when confronted with challenges. It involves being able to manage stressful situations, stay calm under pressure, and effectively solve problems without being seriously negatively affected or quickly burning out.
For example, a very common scenario I see occurs in workplaces which are frequently understaffed, or have a high turnover or absenteeism rate.
This has an obvious effect on the remaining employees – they have to pick up the slack and fill the gaps left by others. There is often more confusion, poor communication and a lack of organisation or consistency. What might seem like a normal day is suddenly disrupted by having 2 key members absent and another who resigned the week before.
While this scenario is hardly ideal for any team, resilient employees tend to be able to quickly adapt to these problems, stay positive, and focus on what they need to do to manage this challenge.
People who lack resilience struggle to remain positive under these circumstances and see a marked drop in productivity and motivation – which often further negatively impacts the team.
What makes employees resilient?
Research over the last few decades has revealed a lot about the factors and traits that make people/employees resilient, with Emotional Intelligence being one of the biggest factors.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence or “EQ” measures many different traits. Well-regarded assessments like TEIQue measure up to 15.
Those most closely linked to resilience include:
- Optimism – how positive and forward thinking an individual is (is the glass half full or half empty).
- Emotion regulation and management – understanding how to manage and regulate emotions and manage how we respond to difficult circumstances (when we can’t manage the problem, we can at least manage our response to it).
- Relationship Management – how effectively we manage relationships has a surprising impact, and having strong support networks is key).
- Stress management – how we internally deal with stress – which is inevitable at some point in any job – and very common in others.
- Adaptability – how easily we can adjust to new challenges without becoming stuck in one way of thinking or behaving
Together, these traits indicate that resilience is not the absence of stress, and not simply “toughing it out,” but the capacity to adapt to pressure, recover from setbacks, and keep performing without it costing your well-being in the long run. It’s less a fixed personality type than (like EQ) a set of different learnable skills. It can be especially beneficial to assess emotional intelligence in management and leadership positions.
Why is Resilience in the Workplace Important?
In the UK, 91% of workers reported high or extreme stress over the past year, with more than half of sick days linked to stress, anxiety, or burnout. This is a common trend across many countries worldwide.Â
Left unmanaged, that stress doesn’t stay contained to how people feel, but shows up directly in the numbers that matter to a business: turnover, absenteeism, and performance.
The biggest returns from a focus on developing resilience have been seen in naturally high-stress industries and job roles, where staff turnover is a common problem, for example, healthcare, call centers or emergency hotlines as well as hospitality.
The most common benefits experienced by organisations have been:
- Less staff turnover
- Less absenteeism – resilient people are more likely to show up to work even on the tough days
- Less team disruptions
- Significantly less pressure on management/leadership
- More resilient organisations that can survive tough times
- Much higher employee engagement, job satisfaction and productivity
- Less time spent on conflict management
- Less time wasted on disciplinary or performance reviews, but rather proactively developing and coaching employees
How to Help Employees Improve and Build Resilience
There are several proactive steps you can take to improve employee resilience throughout your organisation, but perhaps the most important that should be addressed first, is your leadership.
1. Develop Resilience in Leaders and Managers
Gallup data has revealed managers are one of the most cited reasons employees leave an organisation. They also found that managers account for about 70% of the variance in team engagement.
When managers aren’t resilient, or measure lower in some of the most critical EQ traits, this quickly trickles down to their teams and how they operate – or manage setbacks and challenges.
This is why manager selection and development deserves to be treated as the top priority, not one initiative among many. Managers who are resilient and emotionally intelligent cope better themselves, but also actively coache their teams toward the same capability, multiplying the return on any investment made in them.
If you’re building a resilience strategy and have to choose where to start, start with your managers. Fixing problems at the management level first tends to resolve a disproportionate number of downstream issues, because so much of what looks like a team problem is, on closer inspection, a management problem.
A good way to learn exactly where leaders may need further coaching and have opportunities for growth, is through a scientifically validated assessment like the Resilience Ability Assessment or TEIQue (Emotional Intelligence).
2. Build self-awareness in your workforce
People can’t change patterns they don’t recognise.
Resilience is often about understanding how you naturally respond to pressure. Some people become highly self-critical after mistakes. Others avoid conflict, overthink decisions, or struggle to ask for help. Until they are aware of these patterns, they’re difficult to change.
Simple workplace tools like DISC can give employees a practical language for understanding their natural behavioural style and how they tend to communicate, respond to pressure and approach their work.
This can also be a fantastic organisational exercise for a team to do in a workshop setting, and it can help them better understand each other, and their unique strengths or possible limitations.
3. Challenge employees in the productive ways
Resilience develops when people face challenges they believe they can overcome, not when they’re simply thrown into difficult situations.
Many organisations hope employees will become tougher by being thrown in the deep end. More often, this damages confidence because the challenge exceeds the support available.
Instead, gradually increase responsibility while providing coaching, feedback and guidance. As employees experience success in more difficult situations, they build both confidence and resilience.
This is also where healthy self-esteem (another element of EQ) develops, not through empty praise, but through overcoming meaningful challenges.
4. Build strong employee support networks
Strong workplace relationships and social support give employees somewhere to seek advice, gain perspective and learn from the experiences of others.
Knowing support is available makes difficult situations more manageable and gives people greater confidence to tackle them.
Managers can strengthen resilience by creating environments where people naturally help one another. Whether that’s pairing experienced employees with newer team members or encouraging collaboration, strong support networks make individuals more capable of handling future challenges.
5. Make mistakes safe to learn from
People avoid challenges in a work environment when the cost of failure is too high.
If employees feel mistakes consistently lead to blame, embarrassment or punishment, they quickly learn that playing it safe is the better option. Over time, they become less willing to take initiative, experiment or step outside their comfort zone.
When mistakes are treated as opportunities to learn and improve, the opposite happens. Employees become more willing to tackle unfamiliar work because they know that if something doesn’t go to plan, the focus will be on improving rather than assigning blame.
This doesn’t have to mean lowering standards, but it is essential to create an environment where learning is valued as highly as “performance”.
Turning Resilience into Your Workplace Strength
No workplace can entirely eliminate stress, setbacks or change. What organisations can control is how well their people are prepared to respond.
Ultimately, organisations are only as resilient as the people within them. When we talk about building a resilient business, we are really talking about building a workforce that can adapt, recover and continue moving forward when challenges arise.
Developing resilience is one of the most valuable long-term investments you can make in both your employees and your organisation.
Chris has over 30 years of experience as a senior manager and entrepreneur in Human Capital and people management. He has worked extensively with psychometric assessments and pre-employment testing, helping organisations hire the right people and build strong teams.