Well-Being, resilience and
a new psychological contract
In thinking about well-being, many organisations find their starting point in a particular set of drivers - engagement, productivity, perhaps customer service – and whatever that mix of desired outcomes looks like, the next question is often, ‘how can we help our people to achieve them’. This thought process reveals one of the subtle biases that many organisations have around well-being; that business-level support drives business-levels goals. But what room is there in this conception for the individual?
The resilience levels of employees, their ability to manage their own work and lives, is as key to well-being as the type of business-level support on offer. But it’s not just that personal responsibility is required - the very idea of well-being is highly individualised too. From working parents and new graduates to senior execs, the way that people want to work differs greatly within a single organisation. These differences have always been a fact of life, but now many are demanding the choice and flexibility to match the reality. Add to this the balancing act for businesses, of supporting individuals within an organisation whilst also challenging them to perform at a high level, and clearly there is a dynamic psychological contract at play. Corporate cultures, leadership, even legislation and technology can influence that contract, and for businesses looking to get well-being right, understanding this context is key.
Employer expectations and the end of transactional relationships
The evidence base for the benefits of positive psychological well-being is now well established and includes business outcomes ranging from the expected, like lower absence rates and retention, to the more indirect, like innovation and successful change management. Clearly though, personal well-being isn’t just a means to an end, there’s something in it for the individual too. This is what marks well-being out from employee engagement, and the ‘win-win’ nature of the relationship between well employees and well businesses isn’t something that’s lost on a majority of organisations. However, it isn’t merely a transactional relationship, where organisations provide a benefit and employees respond in kind by releasing discretionary effort.
Obviously, there are more complex aspects of the modern relationship between business and individual, for which a kind of quid-pro-quo between well-being support and performance doesn’t provide an immediate solution. For example, what is the response of an employer to someone who wishes to take extended maternity leave? Or a manager who complains about being overloaded with work? Or a rising star who needs to leave to take the next step in their career?
Clearly, these aren’t questions which can always be negotiated by throwing pay rises and bonuses at employees – whether the economy permits it or not. Instead, a more communicative, transparent culture and a deeper understanding of what employees value is needed. One example of this in action is the rise of flexible working. According to one poll conducted last year, around 70% of people now believe that everyone has a right to work flexibly1; a major shift from the office-bound thinking of even 10 years ago.
Accordingly, over 90% of organisations now have some kind of flexible working policy in place. However, more important than putting a formal policy in place, is how that policy is informally supported, and delivered at the level of the individual. An employee who has a close relationship with their line manager, and is trusted to flexibly manage childcare commitments around workloads, is likely to have a more positive Ryan Tahmassebi, Business Psychologist, Robertson Cooper
experience than someone who has to formally request time out to do the same thing. However, there is a balancing act between the needs of the organization and the needs of the individual, and it requires skilled management and the right communication to get this right. As more legislation comes into force in 2014 around parental leave, the demand for and awareness of different types of flexible working is only going to grow, and with it change the type of conversations going on inside organisations that shape well-being.
A similar example to flexible working, where employee expectations are changing, is career progression.
Research shows that for the generation of workers born after 1980, challenging roles and career
advancement rank amongst their top three priorities2 – that’s compared to teamwork and leadership which are typically most valued by older groups. So, as it becomes more common than ever to switch roles, how do businesses provide these opportunities whilst still hanging on to their best people? The answer again lies in an individualised approach based on good managerial relationships and coaching. The drivers here still represent a win-win for organisations and individuals too; perceived employability has been positively linked in a number of studies to performance, and negatively linked to turnover3. So, despite the perceived risk of losing employees which the organisation has spent time and money to up-skill, continuing to offer opportunity does create business benefits.
Flexible working and personal development are just two of a wider range of examples which show how employees are becoming more aware, how their values are changing and how they are more willing to exercise choice to fulfill them. Indeed, historically the trend is that employees are becoming a new type of customer, with a number of modern management approaches reflecting this shift. We hosted John Timpson at the Good Day at Work Conference 2012, who talked about his ‘Upside Down Management’
philosophy as the basis of strong competitiveness and profitability. In his model, management exist to serve front-line Timpson employees, who have the control and resources not just to serve customers, but to feel good about their jobs too. It’s an ethos which is increasingly being recognised for creating more adaptable, innovative and change-ready staff, capable of taking personal responsibility for their own performance and well-being. I recently organised a discussion event around change management with a number of senior HR professionals and there was broad consensus that increased individual control alongside less prescriptive systems and processes are vital elements of that approach.
Pressure, purpose and paternalism
So, if we know that the relationship between employer and employee is becoming less transactional, what does this mean for everyday life, and well-being, inside organisations? Clearly, there is a balance to be struck. For all the control that can be ceded to employees in how they manage their own work and goals, there also needs to be a certain degree of top-down pressure to meet organisational targets.
This is what creates a sense of purpose and defines well-being as well as performance, and if we look at Robertson Cooper’s survey data (of over 100,000 individuals) it bears out this relationship, with clear positive links to performance and physical health.
Figure 1. Mapping pressure, resilience and their impact on health and performance (ASSET dataset, Robertson Cooper)
Figure 1 shows that individuals who have both high levels of resilience and a low to medium level of
workplace pressure are likely to feel more productive and be healthier (equating to lower sickness absence) than colleagues who don’t have that same combination. The group in the bottom-right quadrant of the graph are equipped with the resilience to cope if pressures increase over the short-term, but if that high pressure continues, both health and productivity drop. What’s important to note is that the idea of reducing pressures to as low a level as possible doesn’t lead to improved feelings of productivity and health for employees. Where pressures are lowest, self-reported productivity is also low – at 66% - and this group is likely to be at the biggest risk of ‘rust-out’; becoming disengaged and not equipped to cope if and when pressures do increase.
So, it’s clear that there is an optimum level of manageable pressure, but that it’s unrealistic to expect organisations to be able to ‘artificially engineer’ these conditions at all times. When change occurs, and workloads increase, creating high levels of pressure, staff need the psychological resilience to cope.
This organisational role in creating the right level of pressure is even more apparent when examining two real-world examples. Figure 2 shows ‘person A’ and ‘person B’, two individuals taken from Robertson Cooper’s survey database. Although both have a resilience level equal to the national working population
average of 68%, person B is significantly less productive due to the number of pressures he/she has reported being under.
Figure 2: Person A vs. Person B – performance analysis
There are a couple of possible scenarios for Person B that could explain why he/she is suffering in terms of both health and productivity. Person B could have been under pressure for a sustained period and has reached burn out, or to have experienced a very acute problem in the short-term, for example a recent bereavement or sudden job insecurity because of a proposed restructure. In the case of the latter two, there is no panacea. When it comes to long-term pressure however, one view is that this individual could build levels of resilience to help them cope, but the fact that Person B already has particularly high scores on adaptability and purposefulness means it is likely that there is already a high level of commitment to getting the job done, in whatever way necessary. It’s the prolonged nature of this situation which is having an effect, and addressing the structural workplace pressures to reduce stress levels will mean Person B starts to feel healthier and, as a result, becomes more productive.
The relationship between pressures, resilience and productivity has clear implications for the nature of the psychological contract inside the best performing organisations. Within business cultures which completely shield employees from pressure – intentionally or not – there is more likely to be lower engagement, productivity and a more severe reaction should change occur. These kind of paternalistic cultures can emerge from an authentic concern for employee well-being but, in moving too far towards the low pressure/low resilience profile (the bottom-left quadrant in Figure 1), they optimise neither well-being nor
Age Sector Adaptability Confidence Purposefulness Social Support Overall Resilience Health Score
(out of 20 - where 20 represents worst health)
Productivity Number of days sick leave taken in past
three months Pressure score
(out of 60 - where 60 represents most troubled by pressure)
40yrs Healthcare 72%
70%
70%
62%
68%
7
88%
0
28
44yrs Healthcare 80%
51%
84%
59%
68%
16
49%
6
46 Balanced workload, job security and change, resources and communication particularly poor
business performance. So, how can organisations strike the right balance? The key lies in enabling personal responsibility for health and well-being, building resilience, and at the same time having a good, real-time understanding of the pressure profile and values of the workforce.
Creating well-being – resilience as a buffer
Figure 3. The link between health, well-being and performance
Allowing a greater degree of individual control can be a big cultural challenge, particularly in organisations with more structured management hierarchies and processes, and the idea is tied to the fundamentals of how business leaders view their staff. Do they take what has become known as a ‘whole person’
perspective, considering people as exactly that – with their own individual styles, lives and pressures – rather than a resource or an input into a bigger system? And, on the other side of the equation, do employees have the level of trust and understanding of the benefits that not just increased control, but well-being too, can provide? Leadership styles, organisational legacies, even national events like the credit crunch can affect this balance, and managers’ ability to connect with their staff, communicate well and understand their motivations is again vital. Much of this relies on a softer skill set, often something which organisations don’t actively select managers for ahead of technical expertise, but there are also tangible initiatives that can inform the dialogue around pressure and control. Formalised information from well-being or engagement surveys, appraisals, and other employee listening exercises can all be part of a dashboard of information that helps to inform managerial relationships, in a similar way that the drivers of well-being are collated at a business outcome level. However, even the best dashboarding system is only as good as the recency of its data – employees will be reacting to a variable mix of pressures from project to project, week to week.
So, it is employees’ resilience which provides a buffer between well-being and performance, but also the linkages shown at each stage in Figure 3 too. Those with higher levels of resilience can cope with more challenging combinations of the 6 Essentials, whilst maintaining physical and psychological well-being - and even if they dip temporarily, performance is less likely to be hit as a result. Providing employees with the tools to maintain their resilience, in a way that also encourages high levels of control and personal responsibility, can therefore create a sustainable competitive advantage, not just the short gains borne of working staff harder until they burn out. This doesn’t just mean training, being prescriptive about what resilience is and how it can be built. People need the time and direction to reflect on the aspects which influence their levels of resilience - their current workplace pressures and their individual personality and style
Figure 4. What is resilience?
Personal resilience is the capacity to maintain well-being and work performance under pressure, including being able to bounce-back from setbacks effectively and cope with change. Resilience is a combination of personal characteristics and learned skills. The personal characteristics that combine to create
resilience are;
Confidence: Having feelings of competence, effectiveness in coping with stressful situations and strong self esteem are inherent to feeling resilient. The frequency with which individuals experience positive and negative emotions is also key.
Adaptability: Flexibility and adapting to changing situations which are beyond our control are essential to maintaining resilience. Resilient individuals are able to cope well with change and their recovery from its impact tends to be quicker.
Purposefulness: Having a clear sense of purpose, clear values, drive and direction help individuals to persist and achieve in the face of setbacks.
Social Support: Building good relationships with others seeking support can help individuals overcome adverse situations, rather than trying to cope on their own.
Robertson Cooper has been working to design a tool that allows people to take a check of their resilience levels in a quick, highly personalised way. We have been trialing ‘Resilience Snapshot’ reports during 2013 and are now launching them within client organisations as a way to embed personal responsibility, well- being and resilience, alongside other training and support. What links this type of individual-focused initiative back to the changing psychological contract and motivations of modern employees is the way in which organisations mainstream it and make it part of their internal and external employer brand. Is the expectation set that employees can and should manage their own resilience and well-being, and that being able to do this whilst maintaining a high level of control is a significant benefit?
There are many examples of businesses who have created significant brand cache and awareness doing exactly this. The recent presentation made available online by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on how the online streaming site has done away with job descriptions for ‘freedom and responsibility’ has been viewed over five million times to date. There is much about the Netflix strategy which echoes the approach of getting the key environmental factors right alongside developing an honest, highly communicative relationship with every employee. They pay well, emphasise high performance as well as promotion and development, and give their people the tools to take personal responsibility for their role. However, it’s important to recognise that their approach is one which fits the organisation, its history and culture. For many it may not work as well or may be too much of a departure from the current way of operating. It’s key that organisations find their own way to encourage personal responsibility for well-being in a way that’s right for their business.
It’s certainly no coincidence to see the Netflix model of HR alongside a modern product and business outlook. It’s just one of the success stories which are validating the evidence base on well-being, resilience and performance in-situ, within competitive emergent markets – and they are driving a wider change in the psychological contract between employers and employees. For organisations to keep pace with this change will require honest reflection from business leaders about how they view their people, and for some the bravery to loosen the ties of prescriptive, one dimensional managerial relationships. The rewards though, are great – not just in improved metrics to present to the business, but in a sustainable culture that powers
everything an organisation does. Our continued efforts to secure the economic recovery and future growth sit naturally alongside this shift and, indeed, may well depend on it.
Ryan Tahmassebi
Business Psychologist, Robertson Cooper
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