Wellbeing and Resilience for HR Leaders and their teams
The benefits of a resilient workforce have been discussed in great detail in recent months. Employees who demonstrate high levels of resilience often have a greater ability to adapt to change with ease, quickly bounce back after stressful situations, have a greater sense of control and focus on positive outcomes as opposed to negative ones. Key traits any employer would want in an employee, however they are now more important than ever given the ever-changing nature of business and ongoing organisational uncertainty.
But it’s not just linked to coping with uncertainty. Investing in resilience and well-being can also have a direct impact on an organisations ability to attract and retain top talent. People are placing greater importance on work-life balance, flexibility, career breaks and employee support, and will often look to websites such as Glassdoor to read first-hand what other employees had to say about their experience.
One group of individuals who know this all too well are HR professionals. Over recent months, and driven by the uncertainty caused pandemic, naturally and rightly, employers have become increasingly conscious of the wellbeing and burnout state of their employees. However, whilst HR leaders have become the custodians of employee wellbeing, this is often to the detriment of their own wellbeing.
Recognising this, INTOO ran a virtual experiential HR Resilience Webinar, giving HR professionals the opportunity to take 45 minutes to focus on themselves and their needs
Led by INTOO’s Owen Morgan and Coach and Positive Psychology practitioner Emma Hackett, the webinar focused on:
- Managing stress in the moment
- Adopting a positive mindset
- Creating a self-care plan to improve wellbeing
This was a great opportunity for HR leaders to step back and learn practical wellbeing strategies that can be applied to themselves and shared with their teams.
HR – Highly resilient but highly stressed
Over 73% of webinar attendees stated through an online poll that they were feeling some level of stress at the current time, with 46% of those saying they were very, or extremely stressed.
However, after further discussions on the impact of stress, understanding personal signs of when people’s stress containers are too full – a clear warning sign that more significant issues may arise, and how to regain control through exercises such as the Three Minute Breathing Space exercise, we asked the same question again. Interestingly, the results were positive, and highlighted that a portion of those that were feeling very stressed and extremely stressed had decreased their stress levels with 53% feeling a little bit stressed following the three-minute breathing space, completely removing the very stressed category. A great outcome and a very useful tool that HR leaders can use daily to improve their wellbeing as well as sharing it with their teams.
This should be a concern for any organisation
If your HR teams are feeling overwhelmed, how can they effectively support your business and your employees. Moreover, if this generally highly resilient group of individuals are feeling the pressures of increased workloads, constantly changing priorities, how does the rest of your workforce feel and what does this mean for productivity.
While addressing the organisational context requires more in-depth discussions, the good news, and as highlighted in the webinar, there are several techniques that can be used to quickly reduce stress in the moment. As an example, a simple 3-minute breathing meditation can help individuals to reset and regain control in those moments when everything feels too much. Likewise, the webinar focused on the need for greater self-awareness around how stress manifests itself at an individual level and the importance of recognising this as the first step to addressing it.
Likewise, the importance of self-care and not feeling guilty for focusing on yourself was highlighted. But not simply looking at self-care as exercise but a more rounded approach, one that focuses on, Mind, Body, Heart and Soul.
At an organisation level, prioritising wellbeing and resilience is not a nice to do, it’s a must. Organisations need to have the right culture in place to support this, one that is championed by all leaders throughout the business and where employees feel empowered to challenge any behaviours that negatively affect well-being. Changes are here with an obvious culture shift in the world of work and people’s expectations.
The importance of organisational culture on well-being
When developing resilience and well-being in the workplace it’s important to promote the correct initiatives, however if the culture of the organisation does not fully support these initiatives and employees still feel over-worked and undervalued then workplace stress will continue to be an issue.
Before putting any resilience and well-being initiative in place it is important to first review your current organisational culture in the context of whether it promotes or negatively affects well-being. To begin ask yourself these key questions:
- Organisation– Does it promote a culture of health, well-being and work-life balance?
- Leaders and Managers – Are they able to identify, address and support issues employees raise regarding stress and work overload?
- Employees – How are they managing their own well-being and resilience and what more can be done?
You can watch our HR resilience and wellbeing webinar here and if you are interested in attending any of our events and webinars, please click here to see what events we have coming up.
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