Today’s workplaces are experiencing constant change. Working methods, work tasks, processes, workplaces, colleagues and roles change quickly in conjunction with organizational and technological changes. This constant change may overwhelm employees, causing stress and disruptive behavior as employees struggle to keep up with the changes, resist the change or even prevent the change. For an employer this means that it is very important to be able to identify those with the ability to endure and prosper in environments with a high level of change.

 

The constant barrage of change people experience in their working lives is largely caused by the constant development of the ICT-field and the tools originating from there. This manifests itself as technological progress resulting in shorter product life cycles, tough and increasing competition from all corners of the globe and a high tendency of companies in these businesses to be merged or acquired into other companies. This means that every company that wants to not only survive but thrive should be able to identify individuals’ ability to absorb change.

 

The ability to function even when your environment exposes you to change is called change resilience. Change resilience, together with change readiness, determines whether an individual or company emerges from change as a winner.

 

Developing resilience is a long process, and the methods to build organizational resilience are very different from those to build personal resilience. However, both types of resilience help the company in the long run, even allowing it to pull through situations that their competitors drown in, emerging from the change on an even stronger footing than before.

 

However, organizational and personal resilience are interlinked: a company full of resilient people is resilient in itself, and a company that has a resilient structure in place fosters resiliency in its employees. Thus companies expecting to go through change in the coming years should both develop their employees’ personal resilience and advocate for work methods that create organizational resilience.

 

The table illustrates the need for both change resilience and change readiness. All parts apply to organizations as they apply to individuals. Measuring the level of resilience and readiness a company has, then developing areas as needed will ensure that the company will survive any coming changes in the environment, big or small.

 

 

High           Change Resilience       Low	The Resisters These people or organizations are critical; have narrow thinking; are unconvinced; resist the change and their coping is “stuck”. They typically have medium to high personal resilience but there is medium to low change readiness.	The Flourishing These people are personally growing and developing; open to learning; enthusiastic; optimistic and embrace the change. They typically have medium to high personal resilience coupled with medium to high change readiness.
	The Drowning These people are overwhelmed; feel let down by management; are withdrawn; often quietly hostile; have dysfunctional coping. They typically have medium to low personal resilience as well as medium to low change readiness	The Quitters These people typically have eager beginnings but later have implementation problems; they are disillusioned when the going gets tough; resentful; blame others and generally opt out. They typically have medium to low personal resilience but there is medium to high change readiness.
	Low Change Readiness High

 

Table adapted from www.buildingresilience.co.za. Published with permission from the author.