A Systemic Approach to Building Resilience at Work: Exploring the Resilience of Individuals, Leaders, and Teams

Abstract

There is growing interest amongst practitioners and managers regarding strategies to increase resilience in the workplace. While the occurrence of resilience programs has been increasing over the past decade, research on measuring and conceptualising resilience is only in its infancy (Bardoel, Pettit, De Cieri & McMillan, 2014). A sound understanding of the current measures used to assess resilience within the workplace domain will help to inform approaches to building resilience with individuals and teams. Accordingly, a narrative review including 25 peer-reviewed articles explored how resilience is currently conceptualised and measured, and identified improvements that could be made to ensure organisations have access to valid and practical resilience tools. A range of issues are discussed and recommendations are made to improve the conceptualisation of resilience, selection of measurement tools, and areas requiring further exploration. Overall, this review serves as a resource to inform practitioners of the best available resilience measures to capture an organisations’ current capacity for resilience, or measure the efficacy of resilience training. Additionally, information on issues requiring further research is provided for scholars who are attempting to advance this line of inquiry.