Supporting Emotional Resilience in the Workplace

The stresses and strains of modern life can affect many of us. According to the World Health Organization, one in four people in the world suffer some form of mental ill-health at some points in their lives.

Additionally, major incidents from environmental, fire to transportation disasters create major stresses for those directly and indirectly affected, often lasting for years or lifetimes, and they impact organizations and communities for generations.

One way to help combat these stresses? Improving emotional resilience.

For Resilience First, the issue of emotional resilience extends beyond the individual as that person operates as part of a larger community, especially at work. Backed by London First, Resilience First is a U.K. not-for-profit membership organization focused on ‘improving urban resilience for business communities in the U.K. and beyond’. It highlights that if the business community can support the individual, then the individual can in turn support the community.

Resilience First has published aGuide to Emotional Resilience to share best practices that business communities can advance to help support and improve the emotional resilience of their employees and others around them at work. This is particularly important in advance of or after a traumatic experience such as loss of life or actual or threatened injury from major incidents.

The focus of the guide is on pre- and post-incident activities that are suitable for adaptive approaches by organizations, groups or communities. It includes practices and responses to routine stresses – as they are the bedrock of any collective response – but the guide concentrates on advice to organizations and businesses of all sizes.

“Emotional resilience must not be viewed as an ‘add-on’ that is left to others such as HR departments to implement,” added Robert Hall, Resilience First Executive Director. “Rather, it is something that matters to across the organization. It should be embedded in the culture and behaviors of that organization and must be inspired by the leadership.”

Jacobs designed a special program around recognizing and managing stress and introduced positive mental health champions across the business globally. These champions are trained in how to guide staff who have mental health concerns or crises, to the appropriate level of help; support fellow employees; and encourage positive mental health throughout the workplace.

“With so many factors behind emotional resilience, this guidance shares some of the key fundamentals that can help us all better understand the issues and strengthen our practices in our own mental health strategies,” said Fiona O’Donnell, Jacobs People & Places Solutions Head of Health, Safety & Environment. “Building emotional resilience is an important part of our global program at Jacobs and we look forward to continuing to work with organizations, like Resilience First, our business partners and our communities, so we continue to learn and improve together.”

Access the free Guide to Emotional Resilience here and watch the Resilience First video here.