Resilience and Anxiety? Could these two opposite topics, when covered together, have an influence on your bottom line?
Do you know which word is the most used in a book about resilience in the workplace? Surprisingly, the word the most used in the book “Building Resilience for Success,” by Cary Cooper, Jill Flint-Taylor & Michael Pearn, is anxiety. Yes, I agree, my life seems very dull if I spend my working hours counting the number of specific words in a 250 page’ book…but still, it was worth the exercise as it did prove the connection between resilience and anxiety.
The World Health Organization recently reported that an estimated 12 billion working days will be lost to untreated depression and anxiety by the year 2030, resulting in a global cost of $925 billion (Luxton, 2016). In Switzerland, the costs of anxiety disorders are estimated at around CHF one billion. This includes the costs of medical care, which can go up the roof before a reliable diagnosis can be made. And on the other hand, when an anxiety disorder cannot be effectively treated in time, it can develop into a lasting illness, which can mean loss of employment and very expensive insurance costs (unemployment,Invalidity Insurance, etc.).
Figures from ensa Mental Health First Aid – a programme of the Swiss Foundation Pro Mente Sana, mention that 61.5 million people are currently suffering from anxiety disorders in Europe, representing approximately 8.2% of European population. And 15-20% of the population suffer from anxiety disorders at onetime in their life, making it the N°1 on the list of mental illnesses in Europe, way ahead of depressive disorders, alcohol, and substance abuse. Given how many people experience anxiety, all HR departments should consider addressing such a topic, regardless of the organisation’s size or field.
But what is anxiety?
Anxiety disorders comprise a range of different mental illnesses that are all characterized by excessive fear and apprehension as well as problematic behaviours related to the anxiety. Fear is an ancient, instinctive behavioural response in humans that is essential to survival. It is an emotion that we experience cognitively and physically, resulting in anxiety that in turn influences our thoughts and behaviours. There are seven main types of anxiety disorders you could find in the workplace: phobias, social anxiety disorder (social phobia), generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), agoraphobia (fear of being outside of home), panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It’s not unusual for an employee to suffer from more than one of these disorders.
What about resilience?
Broadly speaking, resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ when encountering the challenges or trauma that are an inevitable part of life. The workplace is embedded with challenges,affecting both personal and performance outcomes. Furthermore, workplace challenges are correlated with high levels of anxiety, and burnout. In the 1980s, researchers in the US began to investigate the qualities that helped some managers to cope more effectively with prolonged stressful circumstances than others. In the late 80s, the American psychologist Martin Seligman, who had been involved in anxiety and depression research, began to take an interest in how the findings could be applied to helping employees cope with challenging work situations. He developed resilience training courses that became successful and part of Seligman’s techniques are still used today.
Here is one technique that helps increase employee’s resilience by enabling them to chunk the pressure they face at work into six buckets, called EHS six primary sources of stress (UK Executive Management Standard Framework). The idea is to ask employees to list the below six sources of stress in order of priority/importance for them, and then place a plus or a minus next to each priority. A + meaning it’s currently not generating excessive pressure and a – meaning it is a source of pressure. This can then trigger a discussion with their manager to put in place the best action plan to address the source of stress with the highest negative score on the priority list.
1. Demands
Includes issues such as workload, work patterns, work environment. Also includes healthy balance between work and home life.
2. Control
How much say do employees have over the way they work, how much autonomy do they have, how much can they influence.
3. Support
Includes encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the organisation, line management and colleagues.
4. Relationships
Includes positive and stimulating working conditions that avoid conflict and deal with unacceptable behaviours.
5. Role
Do people understand their role within the organisation, is the role stimulating enough (employee is not over or under qualified to complete their job), does the organisation ensure roles are not conflicting.
6. Change
How is organisational change (large and small) managed and communicated.
Resilience, a protector from anxiety
There is a complex and non-linear relationship between personality traits on one hand, and resilience processes on the other. This implies that few personality traits are always good or always bad for resilience. Even anxiety, which is often associated with susceptibility to stress, has an important role to play in ensuring one remains alert to danger and takes preventive action. It would be wrong to assume that the least anxious person is always the most resilient one.
A common mistake organisations make is to address resilience building and anxiety/stress management separately, when the success is in the combination of both.
An approach that has for many years provided the main foundation for clinical treatments for anxiety, and that has been adapted to suit workplace resilience training programs is referred to as ‘reframing’ or cognitive approach (Cooper, Flint, Pearn, 2013, “Building Resilience for Success”). This reframing technique – that challenges any negative assumptions about your own abilities and help you face your fears – is useful to learn to start seeing the possibilities in situations that had previously been seen only as problems.
In essence, it involves:
1) Identifying underlying beliefs and assumptions
2) Checking them to see how realistic and helpful they are
3) Adjusting them to ensure that things are being seen in the most positive and realistic light
Here is an example showing how to re-frame an anxiety inducing problem such as: I might lose my job
How could it be re-framed: what challenges does this present that I could rise to? What can I learn from this? What should I do differently? How can I show my true strengths?
This example shows that each person has to dispute their own assumptions and find alternative, positives thoughts that they find realistic, meaningful and believable.
Such an approach will help build confidence, one of the four personal resilience’s resource employees can boost, along with social support, adaptability, and purposefulness.
There is no doubt that, by developing resilience building programs with an anxiety/stress management component, you as an employer not only contribute to the overall success of your organisation by decreasing ill-health related costs, but also boost the well-being of your employees by reducing their anxiety level.
Finally, let’s not forget that a certain amount of anxiety may also make a positive contribution to resilience, by ensuring that problems are recognised in time and dealt with effectively.
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult”
Seneca
