“Resilience is an emotional muscle that must be strengthened to overcome short term struggles and maintained to offset a lifetime of challenges” 
This powerful sentence is taken from the Deloittes Insights report Bridge Across Uncertainty written in August 2020, so still very relevant to the current climate. 
It goes on to look at how resilience can be described as the ability to “bounce back” but says that this definition doesn’t really apply in times of crisis, that a business needs to create a new definition that helps them become more forward thinking and builds a team which maintain their stability post the crisis. 
Stress is personal to us! 
Stress is a very personal experience to each one of us, we all know what it means to us personally and our responses are individual to us too. 
There are lower levels of stress that might come out in nerves, for example before a performance or presentation or meeting someone for the first time, maybe at the beginning of a race, the symptoms are the same but the outcome can often be good. 
Then there are levels of stress, which happen because of a specific incident, for example after an accident, or during a challenging project at work, usually over a shorter period of time and by reaching out to a team around you or relying on others for support the stress can be alleviated. 
Then there is the Toxic or higher level of stress, usually over a longer period of time, when the outcome is not in your control and the events can have a long-term effect on your life or friends or colleagues lives. A person or group of people who experience this can feel totally overwhelmed and can eventually, if not identified early enough, suffer with long term physical or mental health issues. 
Stress can kill! 
It is not an understatement to say stress is a killer, not just from the mental health side of the effects of stress but also from the physical impact too: 
• Stress can lead to a rise in blood pressure, cortisol, insulin and inflammation levels which over time lead to heart disease, diabetes and obesity. 
• Stress can also lead to insomnia, which massively impacts on a person’s ability to perform in all areas of their lives, affecting memory, cognitive learning and ability to make good decisions and this invariably leads to higher levels of anxiety and depression. 
When should you plan resilience training to mitigate the impact of stress? 
The right time is to plan resilience training as part of your team’s ongoing training and development, keeping your teams at the base productive level of stress is the optimum, all jobs come with some form of stress, but manging that to its minimum will have a financial impact on your bottom line. 
The research referenced as part of the report clearly shows how higher levels of toxic stress affect a company’s bottom line, through both financial performance and cost of higher levels of sickness and absence and staff turnover. 
Alternatively, those who have a positive approach to resilience training as part of their employee’s wellbeing strategies, not only survive a crisis, but also emerge from the crisis, better prepared, ready to face new challenges and opportunities and can see beyond into a better future. 
If you are looking to invest in your teams contact us today to find out about our Resilience and Beyond Workshop and if you want to read the full report follow this link
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