In today's job, resilience is a coveted trait. Despite countless attempts by researchers to identify desirable professional attributes, resilience has been glaringly understudied. The feature is related to the interaction of psychological characteristics in the stress process. "Resilience is the ability to recover from adversity by coping with positive feelings" (Tugade et al., 2004). As a result, it revolves around difficulty and, as a result, positive adaptation. It is a necessary reaction to the various difficulties that one encounters during their life (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013). The portrayal of resilience across academic material alludes to the trait’s importance not only on the individual level but also to the group/organizational level.
The workplace environment is associated with a variety of stressors. These include time constraints, unrealistic expectations by the management, limited resources, and competing demands. It is, therefore, quite easy for an individual to become overwhelmed by the pressure in the workplace. It corroborates research findings 25 percent of all employees in the United States view their job as the top cause of stress in their lives (NIOSH, 2014). This highlights the importance of psychological resilience in the organizational setting since employees would maintain their productivity despite the stressful environment. The intensity and pace of today’s workplace result in the widespread prevalence of stress and an increased risk of burnout among employees. This makes it necessary to build resilience skills to help individuals navigate their worklife effectively.
Resilience is a skill set that is built over time and one that can be learned and consequently developed in anyone. Challenges in the workplace, rather than the lack of such, activate resilience. An organization can, therefore, play an active role in fostering the skill set. According to Fernandez (2016), resilience is fostered by attitudes, behaviors, and social support. However, to build resilience skills, an organization must understand and manage stressors in the workplace. The workplace in the modern world is a reflection of the evolution of the business environment across the globe. The increasing complexity coupled with a multitude of demands have made the workplace frantic with individuals responding to the dynamic environment. A resilient workforce will maintain its productivity under pressure and will deal quickly and effectively with the dynamism of the business environment. An organization has no control over changes in the business environment, but it can influence how employees react to challenges by building resilience skills (Rees, Breen, Cusack, & Hegney, 2015).
An organization can facilitate resilience among its employees using a variety of techniques. First is to nurture trust in the workplace. Since resilience is largely a social and psychological concept, trust is a precursor to acquiring the skill set. The presence of trust in the workplace will make employees feel more comfortable and connected with the leadership. As such, they will admit their weaknesses and misgivings, ask for help when overwhelmed, offer and receive constructive criticism, and improve teamwork in the workplace (Wilson & Ferch, 2005). An organization can also foster resilience by understanding and managing its employees’ workload. In some cases, employees cannot manage the heavy workload and end up developing stress which hurts productivity. Managing workload is a tricky task since organizational objectives must still be met as was the case before. Involvement of the employees is important, in this case, since it would help identify the causes of the heavy workload, inefficiencies, and develop feasible solutions. A streamlined process as a result of this intervention would increase the employees’ ability to handle work without overexerting themselves.
A resilient workforce is characterized by connectedness and a shared sense of purpose. As such, by encouraging team cohesion, an organization’s leadership would be creating a support system that essentially facilitates resilience. Such a team would work together to achieve the organization’s objectives without displaying negative behaviors in addition to offering interpersonal support during challenging times. A firm can build team cohesion through social activities, and informal team meets.
Another way of fostering resilience among employees is encouraging autonomy in the workplace. This would encourage employees to make their own decisions and promote innovation in an organization. This way they develop greater confidence in their skills and abilities. The responsibility that is associated with autonomy makes employees feel that they can handle anything that comes their way. If an employee’s project or innovation fails, they will approach the situation with positivity and use the failure as a platform for future success. This effectively builds resilience skills among employees. A firm’s management should recognize employees who take the initiative since that is the key to building a resilient workforce (McDonald, 2014).
Resilience is something that an employer can look out for during the hiring process. The is a variety of attributes that are observable in resilient individuals and can help inform the aforementioned process. First is an optimistic view of the future. Despite setbacks and other challenges, resilient people maintain a positive outlook and believe that their actions will positively influence the future. Acceptance of failure and the subsequent use of failure a building experience is another attribute associated with resilient individuals. Resilience is all about bouncing back from the various challenges one comes across in their daily activities. As such, rather than seeing themselves victims, resilient people concentrate on changing things within their control to achieve positive outcomes. Another attribute associated with resilient individuals is having solid goals and continuously seeking improvement in the pursuit of these goals.
Honesty
Honesty, in this context, is all about holding high moral and ethical standards with regard to the truth and terms of disclosure (Bourdage, Wiltshire, & Lee, 2015). The implications of honesty in the workplace and wide and varied due to the potential to affect both internal and external relationships. Customers and suppliers expect to deal with an organization that prioritizes honesty and ethical behavior in the workplace. Honesty and ethics are key components of proper workplace behavior. Employees encounter issues with honesty on a daily basis. These range from ethical dilemmas related to work to suspect personal behavior. It is important for an organization to create a workplace atmosphere characterized by honesty. This would make employees responsible and accountable for their actions in the workplace.
Cultivating honesty in the workplace involves the concerted effort of both the employees and leaders of the organization in question. The latter play a particularly crucial role since their actions form the precedent for workplace behavior. Therefore, an organization’s leadership should ensure that they maintain high levels of integrity without any compromise. A leader’s actions, therefore, play a significant role in fostering honesty in the workplace. Such actions include sharing credit and following through with their promises. The actions of employees are largely influenced by the level of integrity and trust they have in their leaders. Honesty can also be fostered by promoting open communication in the workplace (Mastilak et al., 2011). By ensuring employees are informed of every development in the organization, rumors and negativity will gradually dissipate. Employees should be allowed to air their concerns without fear of retribution. This helps integrate trust and honesty into the organization’s culture. The management should also emphasize the importance of dealing with mistakes in the workplace as soon as possible. Since honest mistakes occur, employees will inform their superiors of the issues without the fear of punishment. This would encourage honesty in the workplace. An organization’s leadership should always look to reinforce honesty in the workplace by recognizing and rewarding individuals who follow company policy and are consistently honest. This makes all employees aware of the importance of honesty and as such will seek to engage in honesty at all times.
Since honesty is a desirable trait, organizations should seek honest individuals during the hiring and recruitment process. This would play a crucial role in molding the workplace culture. Honest people are authentic and maintain high character at all times. Rather than trying to be above others, such individuals are humble and likable. Consistency is another attribute that is frequently observed in honest people. This is all about standing their ground no matter how unpleasant the repercussions may be. An honest person will always stand up for their beliefs. This is despite the fact their position might be against what the majority believe. Ethical dilemmas offer the toughest challenge with regard to honesty in the workplace. An honest individual, however, will stand their ground and take the action that confirms an organization’s ethical guidelines.
References
Fernandez, R. (2016). 5 ways to boost your resilience at work. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/06/627-building-resilience-ic-5-ways-to-build-your-personal-resilience-at-work
Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M. (2013). Psychological Resilience. European Psychologist, 18(1), 12–23. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000124
Mastilak, C., Matuszewski, L., Miller, F., & Woods, A. (2011). Designing honesty into your organization. Strategic Finance, 93(6), 35.
McDonald, S. (2014). Building individual resilience to improve workplace wellbeing and work outcomes. IN Psych: The Bulletin of the Australian Psychological Society Ltd, 36(6), 16.
Rees, C. S., Breen, L. J., Cusack, L., & Hegney, D. (2015). Understanding individual resilience in the workplace: the international collaboration of workforce resilience model. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 73.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (2014). Stress at work. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/99-101/
Tugade, M. M., Fredrickson, B. L., & Barrett, L. F. (2004). Psychological Resilience and Positive Emotional Granularity: Examining the Benefits of Positive Emotions on Coping and Health. Journal of Personality, 72(6), 1161–1190. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00294.x
Wilson, S. M., & Ferch, S. R. (2005). Enhancing resilience in the workplace through the practice of caring relationships. Organization Development Journal, 23(4), 45.
