Resilient Employees: 5 Characteristics

In difficult economic situation such as the current one, modern-day workplaces are characterised by employees’ rightsizing, demanding deadlines, tough competition and organisational change mechanism. In such a situation, employee success relies on an individual’s capacity to cope and even thrive when faced with challenges of all sorts.

Do you ever wonder what makes someone successful @Work? Chances are, like many people you may think of, that the key to success at work is intelligence or going above and beyond the call of duty by way of working extra hours or taking on extra workload.

Resilience, as per Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, is the ability of people or things to recover quickly after something unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc. Expressions such as perseverance and persistence are also used to define this quality.

Broadly speaking, resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ when encountering the challenges that are an inevitable part of life. The workplace presents a different range of stressors to employees. What is resilience in the workplace? Why is it even important? Can individuals even become more resilient anyway?

The exciting thing about Resilience is that It is a skill. Like any other skill, with practice, resilience can be learned. In this article we shall discuss resilience @workplace and shall provide you with helpful tips about how people can be more resilient at work.

Resilience & Dynamism Go Hand in Hand

The personality trait of hardiness has been found to buffer or lessen the negative effects of stressful events or adversity. It is possible to learn habits and strategies to increase hardiness. Furthermore, by developing effective strategies for reducing vulnerability and avoiding mental health issues and the impact of adversity, it is possible to strengthen and develop personal resilience.

How Personal Resilience Works?

In order to understand what constitutes resilience @workplace, perhaps the most accessible way to think about it is to consider what resilient employees do when faced with workplace adversity that sets them apart from the rest of the pack. What is it that these employees do differently?

It can also help employees to develop and nurture skills for reducing the impact that adversity in the workplace has on them. This may include, but is not limited to, practicing mindfulness, developing mental agility, and taking regular breaks from work to ‘detach’. Here are a few points to reflect upon:

1. Bring in Positive Outlook

By always seeing the glass half full instead of complaining about the glass being half empty, employees are more able to adapt to adversity and also hold on to a sense of control over their work environment. Putting energy and motivation into work, or, having ‘vigor’ is also associated with building personal resilience. It is the ‘opposite’ of burnout, which is characterized by emotional exhaustion, physical tiredness, and cognitive fatigue or ‘weariness’.

Vigor is characterized by having the capacity to put in the maximum effort at work and thus further build personal resilience.

2. Develop Emotional Insight

Another example of building personal resilience at work is by developing and strengthening emotional insight. Insight is closely related to emotional intelligence. Individuals with a level of insight have a level of awareness about the full range of emotions they experience, from ‘negative’ through to ‘positive’.

They will also consider the ramifications of their own reactions and behavior and the effects their own actions have on others. Psychologically resilient individuals can be described as emotionally intelligent.

3. Strike a Balance

Individuals can build personal resilience at work by achieving a healthy work-life balance. This is especially challenging in the world we are living in. Technology doesn’t mean that employees should have access to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In order to be able to bounce back from stressful situations, i.e. to be resilient, employees need to have the energy that can be easily depleted if a healthy work-life balance is not in place. Employees need time to take time off, to relax, unwind and recuperate.

4. Connect with the Divine

Having a sense of spirituality is yet another way to look at and develop resilience at work. This is related to reducing vulnerability and the impact that adversity @workplace has on the individual. Finding meaning in life and work, and feeling that this work is contributing to a greater good, can buffer against the effect of difficulties in life.

It may also be because spirituality may lead employees to view even stressful situations as having positive aspects, or ‘purpose’, and appreciating potential benefits.

5. Reflect

Becoming more reflective is another way professionals can build resilience at work. In other words, being in tune with one’s emotions and emotional reactions can serve to buffer against the effect of stress. Being aware of possible triggers to stress can provide individuals with the opportunity to prepare and gather resources so they are better able to ‘bounce back’.

If an employee knows that a particular circumstance will be especially challenging, they can then implement coping strategies, such as seeking support.

Last Word

In short, resilient employees build strong connections and relationships with others. These high-quality relationships can be characterized by a number of features. Connections are characterized by effective communication in which an individual listens actively and is responsive to their colleague and their emotions.

Resilient employees nurture the work networks they have developed, consistently building trust with others. However, a surprising finding in the research was that resilient employees don’t take the work environment too seriously. They introduce an element of ‘play’ to the workplace, which further fosters positive emotions amongst employees.

Learn how sometimes smaller things in our lives make huge impact and you can take some learnings on a personal and professional level by following me on LinkedIn and on our official website. Also follow us on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Muhammad Sajwani is the Founder, Managing Director and Principal Consultant at Evolve HR which aims at transforming, enriching and evolving Human Capital of Pakistan. At Evolve HR, him and his team thrives in challenging assumptions that hinder organisational aspirations, by creating innovative solutions that yield maximum impact, scalability & benefit to a wider base of stakeholders. As a Business Coach and Organisational Consultant, Sajwani knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.