What is stress resilience in the workplace? Stress resilience can be defined as an employee’s ability to bounce back from and thrive after experiencing a stressful situation or enduring adversity. Developing this thicker skin so future stressors are easier to handle is a skill many employers are overlooking as the workplace changes and employees take on more responsibility on a day to day basis. The benefits of stress resilience training for your team are unmatched. These are some of the advantages you could be missing with less resilient employees in the workplace:
Full of Grit
Grit is the ability to pursue your long term goals which is certainly a quality of employees with high-stress resilience. Working through a challenging goal and coming out successful on the other side requires grit and builds stress resilience for employees. Without these qualities, employees can feel as though the goal was given to them to fail on purpose or blame themselves for not being better to complete it. Increasing resilience training helps build grit in employees so they are able to keep going no matter the obstacle that comes their way.
Avoid Burnout
According to the American Institute of Stress, 26% of workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work.” This is a common theme for employers to experience as the way people work changes over the years. More employees nowadays are glued to their company email, even when they’re away from the office.
Did you know 68% of people checked work email before 8 a.m. and 50% checked it while in bed at night? Not taking breaks and being constantly “on” can cause burnout amongst employees. When training for stress resilience, employees learn to push, take breaks and recover. Knowing when it’s time to practice self-care and refill the tank is a critical part of resilience.
Mental Toughness and Flexibility
When faced with a stressful situation at work, many individuals may have a tendency to either “spin out” and dive straight into catastrophe mode while jumping to conclusions while avoiding to solve or work through the problem. Resilient employees have the ability to maintain a flexible outlook and see where they have control of the situation to figure out what solutions are possible. Training for resilience allows your team to track their reactions and emotions in any given situation to help notice counterproductive patterns that might be hindering their ability to solve problems or find opportunities in a certain circumstance.
Change Management
There are not many people who truly enjoy the concept of change even though it is all around us. The financial, healthcare and education industries are all prime examples of groups who have experienced a large amount of change in the past decade due to the banking crisis, higher secondary education entries and the Affordable Care Act. Making resilience a core practice for your employees, however, gives individuals the ability to anticipate these changes and manage risk accordingly. Dealing with setbacks is much easier for resilient employees during these times of change which also helps them stay more engaged and come out stronger on the other side.
The benefits of stress resilience training are undeniable. Developing a team with the ability to avoid burnout, endure change and possess grit would undoubtedly boost productivity as well as employee morale. Are you ready to learn more about stress resilience training for your employees? Find out more in our upcoming webcast “How Mindfulness Helps Employees Build Stress Resilience”!
