Resilience is a highly sought-after characteristic in our dynamic and rapidly changing world. New research from North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management reminds us that this is far from a fixed trait, however, and is instead something considerably more dynamic.
“Organizations are interested in cultivating a resilient workforce, because they want people who are able to remain committed to an organization and its goals over time,” the researchers say. “First we find that resilience is more of a process than a characteristic. Second, we identify some of the characteristics that can contribute to that process in a meaningful way. Taken together, we think the findings can inform recruitment, hiring, operations and training practices.”
Fluctuating fortunes
The researchers wanted to test the notion that resilience is inherently dynamic and fluctuates according to how we respond to various circumstances over time.
“It’s impossible to assess dynamic resilience at any given moment,” the researchers say. “Dynamic resilience is demonstrated across time. How does people’s behavior change over time? What influences that? Those are the sorts of questions we wanted to answer with this study.”
The researchers worked with a few hundred university students, each of whom was surveyed on a weekly basis for 12 weeks. The surveys were designed to harvest data on things such as the emotional and personal characteristics of each participant. They were also asked about their commitment to the marching band they were in, as well as about any feelings of burnout they had.
Tracking resilience
“Tracking the trajectories of commitment and burnout helped us see how resilience played out in real-world terms,” the researchers explain.
The results reveal that emotional exhaustion tended to increase over time, with commitment decreasing correspondingly. There were various factors that influenced both of these effects, however.
For instance, the more experienced members of the band tended to have more pronounced burnout and their commitment fell at a greater rate than their less experienced peers.
What’s more, those who scored higher on emotional stability also seemed better able to sustain their commitment levels over time. This mattered, as the results suggest a clear correlation between commitment and retention, with those scoring higher on positive commitment more likely to return to the band for another year.
“One takeaway here is that annual employee surveys may not be the best way to assess employee resilience and commitment to an organization,” the researchers say.
Isolated insights
This is because such surveys tend to provide only a snapshot into the fortunes of employees, whereas resilience is a far more dynamic process that ebbs and flows.
“Since resilience affects things like employee retention, which are important to a company’s bottom line, we really need to be touching base with employees more often,” the researchers continue.
The work also highlights how resilience is something that can erode over time as a result of chronic stress, which in turn has significant implications for not only retention but also performance on the job.
“However, we also feel that thinking about resilience as a dynamic process creates opportunities to foster resilience in employees not only through recruitment, but through training, and even job design,” the researchers conclude. “In short, it’s not as simple as hiring the right person and assuming things will work out. Fostering resilience is going to be an ongoing task for management and human resources professionals.”
