Building Employee Resilience through Wellbeing in Organisations

Abstract

Organisations and employees are required to display resilience in today’s constantly changing and unpredictable business environments. Whilst research into how individual-level resilience contributes to an organisation’s adaptive capacity is emerging, there is a gap in the literature on how trait, employee and organisational resilience interact, and how they may be influenced. This study investigated the inter-relationships between these resilience constructs, and whether a wellbeing intervention would influence these resilience levels and employee attitudes and wellbeing. Participants (n = 216), from two organisations, completed an online survey on ‘employee wellbeing’; with 145 of those participants then taking part in a workplace wellbeing intervention, followed by a second survey. Results supported positive relationships between trait, employee and organisational level resilience, providing support for the argument that a resilient organisation consists of resilient employees. The results also highlighted the unique contribution employee resilience makes to employee attitudes and wellbeing. Following the wellbeing intervention, small increases were noted in employee resilience and wellbeing, indicating the developable nature of these constructs. However, the intervention was not influential on trait or organisational-level resilience. Findings of the study are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications, and recommendations are made for future research into supporting employee and organisational resilience