We live in challenging times, facing the unknowns of economic uncertainty, improving technology and a general hunger for immediacy. With widespread government cuts, we are facing tough economic conditions which has created job uncertainty, financial stress and family crises. Employers tend to demand higher productivity from fewer employees in order to save costs. Combine that with a digital anxiety many of us already face; an online world creating an addiction to comparing ourselves with everyone else and consistently try to somehow better ourselves.
We can’t completely control our environmental and economical factors, but we can work on building up our resilience so that we are better placed to cope with challenging times.
What are the benefits of building resilience?
Self awareness
Being able to recognise when you are experiencing stress or anxiety will put you in a much better position to cope with it. Being more self aware of how we respond both emotionally and behaviourally to things will put us in a better position to have rich communications with others, and also with ourselves.
Prevent sickness
Stress still remains the number one cause of absenteeism in the workplace. By recognising the early signs of stress or poor emotional wellbeing in an employee, and providing help for them to build up resilience and manage their wellbeing, absenteeism can be avoided. Likewise, building up your own resilience helps to promote greater physical and mental wellbeing which reduces stress and panic, resulting in lower sickness.
Accountability
By being more aware of our own behaviours, we can become more accountable for them. Once we have a better understanding and acceptance of our own communication and behavioural style in any given situation, we can be more responsible for the way we respond. This puts us in a better position to make good decisions and take accountability for our choices.
Positive approach to change
For many people, change can be a scary and uncertain time which can create anxiety and stress. Building your own resilience can not only help to cope with any negative emotions caused by change, but it can help you to see change as more of a positive opportunity. This is especially important in our digital age of constantly evolving technology, both inside and outside of the workplace.
Start building resilience today!
Resilience programmes for employees will result in healthier, happier and more resilient people, something which is beneficial both at work and at home. By investing in employee emotional wellbeing now when the times are a little tough, they will benefit from happier work lives and personal lives, and will be positively thriving when the economic downturn is over. From an ROI perspective, this can only lead to increased productivity and lower absenteeism.
Richard at Brightstone provides a range of resilience programmes with clients, some of which use mindfulness as a relatively new but proved method of building resilience. Speak to Richard about what sort of programme will work best for your teams.
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