Why You Need A Resilient Workforce and How To Create One

I just came back from speaking at a conference on how to create a
resilient workforce and wanted to share with you a few thoughts
and some resources about this critical topic.

First, what is a resilient workforce? It’s a workforce comprising
employees who:

-Bring high energy, enthusiasm, and goodwill to their work.
-Don’t “sweat the small stuff”, but instead have their eye on
the big picture.
-Respond to change and challenge with flexibility, optimism,
and confidence.
-Operate at peak effectiveness in challenging situations.

Another way of saying it is to borrow from  Harvard Business
School’s Rosabeth Moss Kantor’s classic observation that to
survive in today’s economy, companies have to be “fast,
friendly, flexible, and focused.”

Well, to be that way, you need employees who are “fast,
friendly, flexible, and focused.”

Here’s the problem: many – if not most -- organizations
create a work experience that leave their employees stressed
out, worn out, overwhelmed, frustrated, and disengaged….
Not exactly the raw material for delivering the key sources of
competitive success in today’s economy:

*   The Ability to Create Brand-Building Customer
   Experiences
*   Organizational Responsiveness: Alertness, Agility, and
   Speed
*   Innovation and Intellectual Capital
*   Talent Acquisition and Retention
*   Productivity Per Employee

If you want a resilient workforce, you need to:

*   remove or minimize unnecessary sources of stress
*   provide a work experience that inspires and engages –
   i.e. satisfies key drivers of human motivation
*   manage employees in ways that are consistent with
   human nature

To get you started on this, the website has a new addition:
“Managing Employee Stress and Safety”

http://humannatureatwork.com/Workplace_Stress_ManagingStress.html

Even though it’s written from a safety perspective, the material applies to
employee stress in general and how to minimize it, while maximizing
employee performance.