Improve Your Resilience At Work [In Just 4 Steps!]
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No one goes through their career without facing adversity and setbacks.
Resilience is the distinctive ability to “bounce back” and thrive after these challenges.
It’s an incredible tool we take people through on our resilience training step by step.
Improving your resilience at work is how you can stay in control, and become successful.
How To Improve Your Resilience
1. Time Management
Good time management skills like the Pomodoro Technique help you work faster and smarter.
Regardless of how busy you get, you can at least be confident that you are working on the most important tasks and feel you have things under control.
By contrast, poor time management leads to:
- Missed deadlines.
- Higher stress levels.
- Lower quality work.
A great first step is to sit down and truly prioritise your to-do list.
The sense of control that this gives you is real and powerful!
2. Mindfulness
In a world filled with overwhelming amounts of distractions, it’s no surprise people are getting less done!
With mindfulness, you train your mind to limit distractions and focus on the task at hand.
A simple way to start is that once you ‘pick up’ a task, see it through to completion without breaking.
That means no social media, emails, or unnecessary breaks until you finish a task.
Completing tasks then taking a break after will train your brain to associate a reward with finishing work!
3. Batching
Modern employees have a diverse range of tasks from all sorts of different settings.
So what is the answer? Timeboxing, it improves productivity by reducing task-switching.
Resilient people avoid hopping around and handle one task or a set of related work-tasks at once.
Try only dealing with emails every hour, instead of responding to them as soon as they come in.
Multitasking and rapid task switching will increase your likelihood of stress and burnout!
4. Take breaks
Taking breaks seems counter-intuitive when you’re trying to get more done.
The evidence shows that your concentration and mental clarity plummets after about 90–120 minutes of intensive work.
Detaching from work for a break will boost your energy and clarity.
It will also help you avoid that frustrating feeling of working hard but feeling like you’re getting nowhere!
What Makes Up Workplace Resilience?
Workplace resilience can be summed up by the following 5 characteristics.
- Optimism – resilient employees can stay positive, balanced, and can manage difficult emotions.
- Humour – the ability to laugh at and learn from your mistakes or misfortunes.
- Purpose – a deep emotional connection to a higher purpose and not just your current task.
- Social support – a personal and professional support network to lean on for guidance and support when stressed.
- Values and morals – a strong moral compass and a set of beliefs about right and wrong.
Why Is It So Important?
A 2020 UK workplace survey found that 79% of British employees experience work-related stress, a rise of 20% from 2018 findings.
Increased stress takes a toll on productivity, mental health, job satisfaction, and well-being.
It also leads to burnout, illnesses and absenteeism.
You will also make your working life more difficult and less fun than it otherwise would be.
Conclusion
Workplace stress is an ever-growing issue and has been for a number of years. Coronavirus has only served to accentuate this trend.
Resilience both individually and as a team or organisation can be learned and practiced.
There are well-established techniques for managing stress and improving resilience, you just need to get out there and try them!
A bit like insurance, it is work looking at this when you don’t need it and all is going well as when you do need it, it’s usually too late!
