Changing how we think about resilience
Resilience. It’s one of those words that pops up a lot. The events of 2020 have put a strain on us all, on our home-lives, work-lives and communities. I see so many people seeking new ways to build resilience so we can better withstand the kind of stress we are in the midst of, particularly as we continue to respond to the ongoing pandemic.
One thing I’ve been working on recently is how our workplaces build resilience. There is a growing awareness that we need to respond to the burnout that we see in our colleagues and leaders. People have responded, done their jobs in difficult circumstances and I’ve seen so many who have gone well beyond the call of duty. But now, months later, the adrenaline is wearing thin and people can’t keep going. There is nothing left in the tank.
With the best of intentions a lot of workplaces offer resilience training for people who feel they need it. My discomfort with it is the inescapable, underlying message that it is the people who need fixing, rather than the system. The criticism and shame that people feel when their manager suggests they spend half-a-day learning some new habits to build more resilience is tough. It undermines the trust in that working relationship and demotivates the very people who have given so much to deliver their work during these extraordinary times.
What if we worked on creating workplaces that were truly resilient rather than hoping people will continue to upskill their way out of our stressful work environment?
My advice is to stop. Take a breath and reconsider how you think about resilience.
The first key principle of resilience, according to Stockholm University’s Resilience Centre, is to build and maintain diversity and redundancy. These are uncomfortable ideas for many of us. We like uniformity in many aspects of our work and redundancy, or spare capacity, is the antithesis of our ‘do more with less’ mantra and culture. Our drive for efficiency and always looking to ‘trim the fat’ has created a work environment that can’t possibly offer true resilience.
This is a problem that the bravest leaders I know are starting to explore. It has no easy fix and requires us to entirely rethink the way we organise and resource our work.
There is no silver bullet for this, but I do have one suggestion which offers systemic resilience in the form of diversity and spare capacity. Job sharing.
Job sharing is when you have two people working part-time and share the work of a full-time role. Typically, you’ll have two people each working three days with an overlap scheduled in to make sure work gets handed over without creating gaps for things to fall through.
Job sharing as a resilience tool starts with identifying your most critical leadership roles. Imagine the benefit you’d get in return if you built true resilience into these positions through:
20% extra capacity
Diverse skills that would be impossible to find in one person alone
Diversity of talent that no-one else has worked out how to access yet
People who are typically more rested, working at their best and fulfilled inside and outside of work
Next time you’re filling one of these critical roles in your organisation, stop and think about job sharing. You’ll be building systemic resilience through diversity and capacity, baking it in, rather than look for a mythical hero with all the risk of burnout.
If you’re interested in taking the first step with job sharing, get in touch. I’d love to help you make it happen!