resilience has its limits
My employer offers all kinds of self improvement courses - for communication, leading, selfcare, meditation, stress management… and one of them is called “Resilience”.
I am grateful for the offers, but I am also aware that it is more of a bandaid solution and one that exists to point to and say “but we do something for our employees!” And indeed they do, but nothing about the core issues; like how several departments are completely overworked and working off a huge, never ending backlog all the time with no end in sight while the top accepts more work and responsibilities all the time. The fact that employees are then implicitly asked to sign up for these classes but clock out for them is certainly a choice - like the ones needing it the most would have the work time to spare and then even do it while not on the clock, so basically their lunch breaks most likely, unpaid, despite it being clearly needed for work.
Yes, most of organizing yourself, getting things done, taking care of yourself and what you need to be productive happens outside of work and affects a reasonable workload. But I also experience it as not helpful and antithetical to the intended message when employees have to put in hours of course work on top of everything to handle an unreasonable amount of work you put them under. Employees are repeatedly asked to cut corners and external companies are hired to find room to optimize and coach employees, but after years, this has been squeezed dry. People cannot find further ways to optimize anymore. There’s a point when external companies and self help courses cannot make up for leadership mistakes anymore. Not to mention that these classes are obviously deeply employer-apologetic - suddenly it’s not a leadership mistake, but your fault. You’re the problem. Fix yourself to serve your employer. You aren’t being mismanaged, you just aren’t resilient enough. How convenient!
It fits right in to a general culture of work in society that is increasingly seeing very normal human emotions and body functions as problems to solve. Your need to sleep and grieve, your need for recreation and your inability to focus at 100% for 8 hours is inhibiting their desire to grow and make more shareholders happy. Instead of working around normal human limitations, workers around the world are asked to do the impossible, for little or no improvement in workplace culture, workload or income.
Leadership is quick to forget that resilience is something that is required and put to the test not only at work, but in private life too. Things happen and then there is not much resilience left for work. Even more so for when uncontrollable things in private happen while the problems are work are controllable and done deliberately. I cannot blame anyone who refuses to reserve resilience for work situations that everyone responsible for walked into with eyes wide open, aware.
We’re resilient in our romantic life, while taking care of extended family, in child care, during the commute, in our health and in our hobbies on top of our work. Where’s the leadership’s work resilience? Where is their ability to bounce back from hearing a “no”, or rejecting opportunities?
Published 07 Jan, 2025