Resilience: what is it? And why does it matter?

If an employee is mentally resilient, it means that they are able to absorb setbacks and bounce back from them. There are plenty of theories about resilience that basically all say that having a higher level of energy and positive emotions makes you mentally more resilient. What are referred to as personal and work-related resources play an important role in this. Personal resources, also referred to as psychological capital, are:

• hope: a person really expects to be able to achieve certain goals;
• optimism: a person expects that good things are going to happen;
• resilience: a person is capable of overcoming setbacks;
• self-belief: a person has the confidence that they can influence their environment, for example by completing a certain task or solving a problem.

Work-related resources refer to:

• autonomy and the ability to plan your work: does a person have enough space to organise their own work and to do it at their own speed?
• support: does a person receive enough social and practical support from managers and colleagues?
• growth: are there enough activities that help with development and evolution?

If these resources are available to an adequate extent, and you make sufficient use of them, and there are not too many weak points – like perfectionism, a tendency to depression or a bad atmosphere at work – then you are mentally resilient.

Resilience helps to prevent burnout. It does appear that employees who have sufficient personal and work-related resources find they have more energy and more positive emotions. In other words: they get enthusiastic faster.

On the other hand, employees who feel they have heavy pressure of work or a bad atmosphere at work, and who are short of resources have less energy and more negative emotions: they feel less involved in their work and so run more risk of burnout or developing symptoms of depression.

In Rob Hoedeman's spiral model you can see the links between resources, positive emotions, vulnerability factors, negative emotions, loss of energy and losing interest in one's work.

Investing in resources (the little blue upwards arrows) is therefore the way to increase an employee's resilience. Although you as manager can mainly influence the work-related resources, you can definitely support your employee in the development of personal resources.

If you make sure you provide enough support in the form of collaboration and appreciation, that person will start feeling more positive emotions. In addition, the presence of skills and challenges are among the things that contribute to a person's self-belief. As a manager, you are ideally placed to encourage and motivate your employees to get working on these. The more so if you yourself are also actively doing this, and continue to do so. This way, you provide a role model for the people around you.

In order to map out where your employees stand on this, and where there is room for improvement, you can walk through the following questions with them.

• How high is the bar in what you are doing?
• Do you know what goals you want to achieve at work? How firmly do you believe that you will achieve these goals?
• What is your plan if you do not achieve your goal? How do you deal with constraints and setbacks?
• How good are you at trusting yourself and other people?
• Do you have to do a lot yourself? Can you forget about work in your free time?
• Do you have enough freedom to be able to do your work in a way that suits you? What would help you even more?
• Do you get enough support from your colleagues and manager? What would help you even more?
• Does the atmosphere at work help or hinder you in carrying out your work? What would help you here?
• What is interesting about your work? What would make it more interesting?
• What sort of activities make you more energetic? What are the important things in your life? Do you do enough of these after work? What would help you to do more of them?

With the answers to these you can both look at what the employee wants, what they can do themselves and where you can support them. This should not be a one-off exercise, but form part of your regular meetings with your employees.