Innovation Insight: How to Build Workforce Resilience

Good health makes good business sense – but the last few years have seen the importance of well-being demoted across organisations. Professor Keith Whitfield, Cardiff Business School, joined this month’s Innovation Day to highlight how employee well-being can help drive engagement, creativity, innovation and resilience.

Dame Carol Black’s 2008 report Working for a Healthier Tomorrow found considerable evidence that health and well-being programmes produce economic benefits across all sectors and businesses of all sizes. Organisations need to step away from seeing wellness programmes as an extra benefit, but as an imperative to increasing workforce resilience.

However, organisations must remember that well-being needs proactive management and to be made sustainable. Organisations must refrain from creating ‘bolt-on’ wellness programmes – promote top level buy-in whereby leaders are visible and proactive participants, and ask what employees want from these programmes to encourage employee buy-in and involvement.

Take three steps now to manage well-being:

1. Improve job design: Job design is fundamental to building resilience. Redesign job roles (based on a clear vision) and align these with people’s purpose. Focus on recognition and progression to increase resilience.
2. Build purpose and (perceived) control: Don’t just tell employees to take control – build an environment that fosters this behaviour, e.g. listening and involving employees in decision-making.
3. Analyse stress better: Too few organisations are measuring what specific job factors cause stress – many HR leaders spend too much time creating rules that constrain employees rather than looking at how jobs are being done.

Participants included Airbus, Camden Council, Interserve and Kingston CCG. Next, this group will explore Innovation in Three Courses: Insights from Entrepreneurial Leadership Across Three Worlds. For more information and to join, please view the event page.