Resilience is one of those workplace qualities that is widely cited as being crucial for the volatile world we find ourselves in.  As such, it’s little surprise that many employers now offer specific training to help staff build up their resilience levels.

A recent study suggests that these interventions are not especially effective however.  The programs, which have become popular in the belief that they not only improve the mental health of employees, but also their productivity, are largely untested in terms of their effectiveness.

The researchers attempted to address this by comparing the outcomes of a resilience-based intervention, called SPEAR, with standard training that was provided to several hundred military recruits in the UK.

Building resilience

The SPEAR program was specifically designed for the Royal Air Force and focuses on a number of specific activities, including managing emotions, developing resilience building techniques and capitalizing on personal strengths and weaknesses.

They tested the program’s effectiveness by splitting the recruits evenly between the two interventions.  Each volunteer was assessed for various mental health symptoms, including post-traumatic stress disorder and homesickness before the intervention began.

Each then followed the 9 week course, before being assessed again, with a final assessment then undertaken 3 months later to determine whether any changes had stuck.  At each point, the volunteers were also asked to give their own feedback on the course.

Sadly, there seemed to be no evidence that participating in SPEAR made any difference to the mental health of the volunteers.  What’s more, their attitude towards mental health hadn’t really changed and they were no more likely to ask for help than those on the regular training.

No easy answer

“Many organisations search for a ‘silver bullet’ intervention that can be used to improve the mental health and wellbeing of their employees when time might be better spent refining leadership and building strong cohesion,” the authors reveal.

They also believe that any resilience interventions need to be thoroughly evaluated so that their introduction can be driven by evidence rather than fashion or gut instinct.

Suffice to say, these findings emerged from a military setting, so they may produce different findings in evaluating resilience interventions in other contexts.  Nonetheless, they do serve as a salient reminder that not all training programs are effective at changing behaviors and attitudes.