The current work scenario for a vast majority of employees around the world is one of constant change and uncertainty. Under circumstances that require high levels of pressure, acute mental execution, and the ability to shift focus constantly without losing track of activities, one of the most critical skills that companies are seeking to promote in their employees is RESILIENCE. But, where does resilience come from, and how can you develop it within your team? 

This article will show you some simple initiatives that will help you and your organisation to bolster resilience and sustain your employees during hardship.

What is resilience? 

Let us start by defining resilience. Various researchers have defined resilience as the ability to overcome change and adversity, ‘bouncing back’ to a position of hardiness, and making the best use of the resources at hand¹. Diane Coutu, a former senior editor at Harvard Business Review, found overlapping research describing resilient people as having three main characteristics: a firm acceptance of reality, a deep belief that life is meaningful (often sustained by a strong set of values) and an exceptional ability to improvise².

When I think of resilience, I imagine having to reach a point that is preceded by a labyrinth full of terrors and holding the mental strength to move through it until the end. 

Though resilience seems to be an innate characteristic, it indeed can be fostered, and employers have a crucial role in its development. Next, we will see some simple initiatives that can help organisations cultivate employee resilience and its impact on business survival.

1. Recognise and acknowledge individual strengths

Have you ever stopped doing good deeds at work because nobody cared? Clear identification and support of individual strengths, communicate appreciation of unique everyday contributions, bolstering self-confidence, and trust in one’s ability to create useful solutions with the resources at hand.

 This belief of being able to respond appropriately when the circumstance requires it, empowers employees to challenge themselves and take actions towards innovation. 

Some of the behaviours that are not usually recognised or rewarded, and can help building resilience are:

• Prosocial behaviours (e.g., promoting social activities or actively participating in those promoted by others)
• Proactive behaviours (e.g., rethinking methods to increase efficiency, taking the lead on housekeeping chores)
• Change-related behaviours (e.g. discussing with peers positive outcomes of change, volunteering to be change champions, etc). 

Here you could ask yourself, how do we recognise employee’s everyday contributions? Perhaps mentioning in the weekly meeting individual milestone achievements? Or sending a personal note to acknowledge efforts that are usually given for granted? Noticing when employees are undertaking new challenges also secure feelings of being valued.

2. Create workplace memories and record them 

Isn’t it good to have a look at the pictures of that BBQ where you could not stop laughing with your colleagues’ stories? The principal moderator in an organisation’s atmosphere of stability is the employee network. Promoting the creation of strong emotional ties between associates reassures support from peers and supervisors during unusual times, as well as commitment to collaborate. Those ties are reinforced when people share moments of fun, recovery, and relaxation. 

Providing socialization spaces forges the possibility of discussing interests and challenges that usually come with solution brainstorming. Likewise, having a display of those memories works as a reminder of the organisation’s gratitude and willingness to keep facilitating good moments, which encourage meaning and purpose, instrumental factors for resilience. 

If the circumstances don’t allow for face to face contact, ignite your creativity and consider innovating with some on-line activities that could spark laughter and positive memories. How about a zoom background contest over a coffee? or a recollection of the funniest working from home stories in the company news blog or social media? Having an accessible memories box conveys the message “you are not alone!”. 

3. Exemplify resilience by adopting transparent and continuous communication strategies

How many times have you thought “I wish I knew what was really happening, then I would’ve acted differently”? The ability to have a down-to-earth view of reality, pinpointing what is really under one’s control and what is not, depends greatly on the quantity and quality of information someone has about the matter at glance. 

When organisations implement steady communication systems where both positive and concerning scenarios are openly discussed with employees as well as the proposed solutions and expected outcomes, change adaptability can be reframed towards what is vital for the company and not only what is assumed by each employee.

Likewise, remember that attitude can be taught through role modelling and there is no better opportunity for role modelling than when communicating with one’s team. You can demonstrate a resilient attitude using challenges to your advantage by exploiting all the work and casual communication channels. Dedicate time to catch up with your team members and try to get a complete panorama of how current contexts affect each one of your employees, they will reciprocate being more understanding and feeling more confident to ask for help when needed.

4. Strengthen the sense of control that employees have over their own jobs.

Mahatma Gandhi said “Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock”, the same can be said for employees who do not have control over their work.

 Job ownership and autonomy amplify belongingness and intrinsic motivation (that one fuelled by personal interests) when the employee associates work-related targets with personal achievements.

Additionally, holding a high level of discretion over job-related tasks elicits meaningful creation of goals and boundary identification, which hinders time and resource utilization. Every time I am able to succeed with my self-determined work plans, I feel more confident I can do greater things!

Helping employees to take deep responsibility for their duties and how those are performed, requires not only a clear explanation for the need of monitoring practices but also a supporting context in which employees are encouraged to seek advice and let team members partake in their advances. 

When faced with the fact that accountability for effectiveness and improvement of one’s tasks depends mainly on one’s decisions and actions, our brains focus on the challenge and leave aside debilitating feelings like fear and sadness. The latter is known in positive psychology as ‘flow’ which arises in moments of a hurdle, then, let employees increase their sense of flow by supporting them on taking the reins of their work carriage while you guide them through their paths. 

5. Foster a culture of feedback based on company values

When challenging situations arise, an unyielding set of values becomes the framework from which adaptive actions are originated. Those values are propagated by means of providing timely and constructive feedback where leaders can enact guiding principles, recognise employee value-driven behaviour, and pave the way for harnessing errors as learning opportunities.

 Animating employees to seek and provide feedback consolidates support baselines that unravel social tools to thrive through uncertainty. 

Practising empathy with your team will help you find the right words when providing feedback. What did you do to overcome similar situations? What did you feel then? How did your personal, along with your company values help you to take the right direction? Share and re-share (if necessary) with your team those professional past challenging experiences that threatened business survival and how the company values served as a beacon to guide you. 

I have never felt more supported and inspired than when my mentors entrust me with the recollection of their stumbles, the emotions triggered and the approach they took to move forward. It helps me see the light at the end of the tunnel, and value the game-changing learnings that I can obtain from difficult situations.   

Boiling it down…

Being confronted by ongoing changes in the way we live and work, all of us have been obligated to draw on our resilience reserves. Some of us learning to be more with ourselves, some of us learning to manage merged life spaces. 

It has not been easy, and the horizon appears full of new battles. That is why nurturing our resilient capabilities is so important. As leaders, we can help ourselves and our teams to build those competencies by shaping the essential platform bricks that sustain resilience.

Keep in mind that:

• Recognising individual contributions, strengthen employee confidence.
• Creating memorable moments reinforce emotional ties within the team.
• Communicating reality in a transparent way helps your team to have a clear perspective and make better decisions.
• Giving employees control over their jobs under a supporting framework encourage their sense of capability. And,
• Timely and sincere feedback based on values serves as a navigation guide to move through the challenge. 

Reflecting on these initiatives has helped me recall all those occasions when my mentors and team stimulated my resilience, building up positive feelings towards my job and workmates. I invite you now to share your resilience-building stories and giving us a hand knitting a support net for the upcoming future. 

References

1. Kuntz, Joana, Malinen, Sanna & Naswall, Katharina. (2017). EMPLOYEE RESILIENCE: DIRECTIONS FOR RESILIENCE DEVELOPMENT. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice & Research, 69, 223-242. https://doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000097
2. Review, H. B., Goleman, D., Sonnenfeld, J. A., & Achor, S. (2017). Resilience (hbr emotional intelligence series).
3. Parul Malik & Pooja Garg (2020) Learning organization and work engagement: the mediating role of employee resilience, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31:8, 1071\-1094, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2017.1396549

Best Practices Before You Start Your Cloud HR Implementation

For those looking to modernise HR administration and control, migrating from legacy HR management systems to a comprehensive cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solution may be the best approach. 

Integrating cloud HR with your overall digital strategy will help align your HR processes with your business objectives in an increasingly information-based environment. These processes include talent search, onboarding, performance and experience analysis, and payroll.

However, the success of implementing an HCM system hinges on several critical internal factors that dictate the overall end results. Here are a few essential things you need to do before making the switch to cloud HR, in order to realise the full benefits.

Understand What You’re Getting Into

The very first thing you need to do before embarking on cloud HR migration is to ask yourself whether your organisation is ready for the radical change, and what an SAP SuccessFactors HCM solution really brings to the table. Part of the readiness assessment is HR’s willingness and capacity to unlearn old ways and adopt new practices.

Take an objective look at your current HR model and identify all the roadblocks, bottlenecks and inefficiencies you’re hoping to eliminate by shifting to cloud HCM. In addition to this, make sure you understand all the changes that come with moving HR processes and data to the cloud. Examine all this with a long-term perspective, to understand the big picture of what this course of action entails, and to gain an accurate projection of the ROI.

Involve Your End Users in Solution Design and Decision Making

Although the ultimate goal of an HCM system is to serve the best interests of HR for the greater benefit of the company, you must consider how the transformation affects those directly involved. Your end-users, in this case, are potential job candidates, team leaders, supervisors, department heads and the individual employees.

Collaborate with the end-user’s representatives in brainstorming ideas for an ideal system that fits perfectly with everyone’s expectations. Keep in mind, however, that even with a highly customisable solution, there are limits to how well a digital system will match the already established HR structure. As you define the fundamental principles of the system, help everyone understand that some of the HR culture may be lost during the translation to digital. Also, identify and resolve any political, social and hierarchical issues before they arise when making significant changes.

Prepare Your In-house IT Team

Your in-house IT team will do a lot of the heavy lifting in facilitating the migration to cloud HR. On top of that, they’ll have to work closely with HR and management in collecting data, making essential system configurations and installing support equipment where necessary. Prepare your IT team for the additional workload by arranging training sessions or bringing in extra hands with useful expertise and experience in cloud HR prior to implementation.

Also, ensure that the IT and HR departments are well aware of their roles and responsibilities during the implementation process and continued support of the HCM. This will help smooth out the transition by avoiding any delays and complications due to unforeseen technical challenges.

Define the Implementation Methodology

Once you have decided on what you need and have prepared your business for the transformation, it’s time to decide on how it’s going to take place. You can go one of two ways when implementing the cloud HCM. One approach is to install the entire SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite and adapt all HR processes to the platform across the board. The other is to implement just the core application at the beginning and making incremental expansions with time.

A slow and steady implementation gives your businesses some breathing space after every major change and lets your staff adjust to every transition. Complete integration means your business makes the switch in one go. Either way, remember to keep your eyes on the price and consider the long-term plan of the implementation.

Selecting an Implementation Partner

Adapting and running a cloud HR facility is not a journey you want to take alone. Find the right SAP SuccessFactors partner to assist you in planning and integrating the right SAP solutions for your HR needs. You want a partner who knows the industry inside and out and with vast experience in guiding businesses formulate mission-critical strategies. That partner must also be in a capacity to provide long-term support, ideally for the foreseeable lifespan of the product.

A SAP SuccessFactors partner will help you make well-informed choices for your business and update you accordingly as new changes in methodology and technology emerge. At Discovery Consulting, we work closely with businesses in planning and implementing SAP HCM as a way to modernise and improve the efficiency of outdated HR management styles. Get in touch with us today and start your cloud HR journey with a capable, hands-on partner.

During the Annual SuccessConnect Conference in September 2019, SAP SuccessFactors announced the release of HXM (Human Experience Management), an all-new experience-based interface for the HCM (Human Capital Management) software suite. During the opening keynote, SAP SuccessFactors President Greg Tomb pointed out that it was time CEOs understood the experience of their employees, and that HXM would answer that challenge.

What is HXM and more importantly, what does it bring to the HR table?

The HR Problem

Employees have long been considered company assets or resources; the term “human resource” indisputably supports this fact. Business leaders consider hires as investments, and it’s easy to see why. To some degree, the worth of an employee can be measured in figures and graphs, and on a spreadsheet through some predefined parameters. We’re not saying that this is entirely wrong – the whole premise of HR is, fundamentally, based on such metrics, but there is a crucial variable missing in this equation. Experience.

Both employers and employees are slowly moving away from this antiquated HR management style to a more experience-driven HR model. In this model, the employer collects and analyses experience information throughout the various stages of the employee life-cycle, from onboarding to retirement. This information is then used to personalise the workplace experience for every employee.

According to the 2020 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey, about 80 per cent of business executives agree that employee experience is important. Still, only 22 per cent are confident that their companies have excellent personalised experiences for their employees.

Generally, it’s not that employers don’t appreciate or acknowledge the significance of employee experience. However, the availability and implementation of an experience management system is a significant hindrance to adopting an experience-based HR model. And this is the very problem that the minds behind HXM hope to solve.

What is HXM ?

HXM is a ground-up transformation of the HCM suite – the highly recommended cloud-based HR management system from SAP. The new version still retains some of the fundamental HCM functionalities as the original. SAP SuccessFactors aimed to help executives engage, motivate and inspire their staff by focusing more on improving the experience, rather than on the resource or capital aspect of HR. Organisations spare no effort when fine-tuning customer experience, so why not direct the same energy towards employee experience and satisfaction?

The human experience management suite combines what’s known as O-data and X-data to provide actionable insights into improving HR experience.

O-data describes rich transactional information. Think of this data sets as quantifiable or tangible facts and figures, such as how many candidates are applying for posts, how many employees are leaving the organisation, and the details of every employee. O-data gives an eagle-eye view of what is really going on in the organisations as far as HR is concerned.

X-data refers to qualitative human factor information that can only be drawn from the individuals themselves. It can be widely diverse and includes things like thoughts, opinions, emotions and even beliefs. X-data deals with what people, both from outside and from within the organisation, feel and think about certain factors that influence employee satisfaction and HR productivity.

Be combining the relevant O and X data sets, we can work out, for instance, why morale is down, why there is a high turnover rate, or how to keep my employees happy, among other things. It’s all about putting ones and twos together and figuring out what’s going wrong, as well as how to adjust key processes to align the organisational culture with employees’ preferences.

Why is Employee Experience So Important?

Since late last year, every SAP SuccessFactors Partner has been going on about HXM and experience-based employee valuation and management. But is employee experience that important? As it turns out, yes, it is indeed.

According to Gallup, a majority of employees don’t feel engaged or appreciated enough for their effort and time in the workplace. Such employees feel indifferent towards their jobs and end up disliking their occupation and the parent company itself. It takes more than just a paycheck to please employees – that’s the cold hard fact.

A high level of dissatisfaction among employees often leads to absenteeism, low motivation and reduced productivity. In addition, it can also fuel a high employee turnover rate, which hits organisations hard, especially those already scrambling to retain talent. SHRM describes how employers can spend between 6 to 9-months worth of salary in replacing a single employee.

Happy employees are productive employees. The road to happiness begins when the thoughts, feelings, and preferences of employees are valued, and when every individual’s workplace experience is supported and enhanced. Thinking about it, it’s really not much to ask that employers stop regarding their workers as assets but instead as a community, with unique members and diverse needs. HXM is a robust solution that bridges the gap between employers and employee satisfaction.