Exploring resilience-building strategies at work

The notion of resilience has risen in prominence over the past two decades, as its critical importance to sustainability and wellbeing has become increasingly recognised. Few years have passed without multiple publications in the popular and corporate press talking about “the buzzword of the year” and defining strategies for resilience building.

With origins in the physical and natural sciences, the notion of resilience has expanded from mechanics and materials to many other domains, including psychological resilience, resilience in infrastructure, cities, urban economies and supply chains as well as natural and socio-ecological systems. Not much has been said, however, about how collective resilience is at work, at work, or is present in organised social systems such as companies, collectives and cooperatives.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made it more important than ever to consider and address the resilience of workers. Understanding how resilience can be developed through deliberate practice, and what it requires from us collectively, is an increasingly important question.

This applied research programme seeks to explore and understand more about how resilience is understood and pursued for people at work, collectively. Evaluating how resilience manifests, individually and collectively, when intentionality informs decision-making might provide a deeper understanding of the ways in which the private sector could both inspire and enable individuals and societies to navigate a positive transition to a new, more resilient world of work.

Please contact us if you are interested in participating in / benefiting from resilience @work sessions in your workplace.