Resilience in the workplace - a review of the evidence for resilience training

Resilience, Mental Toughness, 'bounce-back-ability', hardiness.  These terms are now hot topics in organisations.  How do we help staff cope with the increasing demands and pressures of today's workplace?  And do current initiatives to help people cope actually work?  Professor Cary Cooper and his colleagues have attempted to find out by conducting a survey of the latest research papers.*

Resilience - it's one of those funny psychological concepts.  We all know when we see it, we use it as an every day term, perhaps when discussing the latest sporting achievement or amazing comeback we have witnessed on the TV.  But when you actually come to define it, it becomes a bit more elusive.

In conducting their review, Cooper and his colleagues found many different definitions in the 14 studies, plus a range of other terms for similar characteristics (such as the ones in the opening paragraph).  They were keen to differentiate 'resilience' from these other terms and settled on the definition that suggests that it is something which is malleable and therefore, can change over time and of course, be learned.

Four areas of measurement were used as showing evidence for the benefits of resilience training; 1) mental health and subjective well-being outcomes, 2) physical/biological outcomes, 3) psychosocial outcomes and 4) performance outcomes.  Interestingly, only six of the 14 studies included in the survey actually measured changes in resilience itself and in only three of these studies were there statistically significant increases in resilience.  This might seem like a athletics coach training a runner in various sprinting techniques but forgetting to actually check that he can actually run faster as a result.  But, the researchers do point to the wide range of training interventions, ranging from Cognitive/Behaviour techniques to mind/body to the spiritual.  As with many areas of psychological study that are in their infancy, a lack of randomised trials, variations in methodology and a range of populations makes interpretation difficult, and it is not yet clear what types of resilience training work best, with whom and by what mechanism.  It may be that resilience training helps to moderate certain psychological aspects, and hence works best with people who, for example, are prone to stress.  It may also mean that there is no one way of building resilience that works across contexts and populations.

That said, virtually all the studies reported improvements in outcomes as a result of resilience training, with impressive results in the area of mental health and well-being outcomes, such as stress, depression, anxiety, and negative mood.  However, there is no one single variable that consistently shows improvement across all the 14 studies and more research is required to discover exactly what methods produce the best results and by what mechanisms.

So, the latest signs are that resilience training can have positive effects, but more research is called for and Cooper and his colleagues conclude their paper with recommendations for taking the research area forward.

*This is only a brief summary of their work and the full paper is definitely worth a read, as it does provide a useful summary of the latest progress in an area that is of concern to HR practitioners working with overloaded people in the workplace.

You can find it at:

Roberston IT, Cooper CL, Sarkar M, Curran T (2015)  'Resilience training in the workplace from 2003 to 2014: a systematic review', Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88, 533-562.