How improving resilience can boost productivity and reduce sickness absence
During Vanessa’s recent session on resilience, she talked about the current labour market and the difficulties that employers are having in recruiting new staff, due to low unemployment and low net migration – meaning that the pool of available workers is small.
The impact of this is, in part, responsible for higher demands being made on staff, who are working longer hours and feeling the strain.
Vanessa looked at the importance of employee resilience and the ability to ‘bounce back’ during times of strain, and how this impacts on employee wellbeing.
We looked at the costs of low resilience including sickness absences, presentism and lost productivity, and considered the need for employers to take more action to look after the staff they have, both as responsible employers, but also to avoid lost time through absences or recruitment difficulties.
Insight into resilience
Vanessa recently became an accredited Wraw Practitioner, which enables us to use this cutting edge psychometric tool that has been developed to provide insights into an individual’s resilience and a platform to work with individuals in a coaching setting to improve their personal resilience.
In addition to supporting employees at an individual level, Wraw enables employers to gain greater understanding of the resilience levels of their teams, leaders and the organisation as a whole. This can be used to develop strategies for improving resilience for the benefit of the business.
The Leadership Report provides data on leadership behaviours that influence employee resilience while the Organisation Report alerts employers to specific pressure points. Using this data, organisations can target investments in resilience and wellbeing initiatives more effectively, ensuring they have the greatest impact.
If you would like to learn more about how we can utilise Wraw to help you as an individual or to help your organisation please get in touch.
Getting started on your wellbeing journey
We understand that with all the uncertainty around at the moment, many organisations are reluctant to start something new or commit to additional costs.
With this in mind we have developed a new tool which we are offering to our clients free of charge. It is a wellbeing survey for organisations looking to test their current arrangements and see how their employees are feeling about specific aspects of their environment and work experience. The tool:
- Provides an accurate starting point for organisations to develop a wellbeing strategy and a platform to benchmark future improvement and demonstrate ROI;
- Identifies areas of strength and areas of risk enabling you to take effective action fast;
- It can be adapted for clients in order to analyse results by location, team, role, age and gender;
- Can be branded and tailored to align with your organisation’s wellbeing branding.
Signposting to further reading and resources
During her talk, Vanessa referenced several reports. If you wish to continue your own research in this area please see the follow links:
The Taylor review of modern working practices
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/good-work-the-taylor-review-of-modern-working-practices
Thriving at Work: the Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/thriving-at-work-a-review-of-mental-health-and-employers
Deloitte’s report: At a tipping point? Workplace mental health and wellbeing
https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/public-sector/articles/workplace-mental-health-and-wellbeing.html
The Lancet article: Long working hours and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60295-1/fulltext