In today’s hyperconnected, hyperproductive workplace, stress has become a silent companion for many professionals. Particularly across Southeast Asia, where long working hours, back-to-back meetings, and a strong culture of high performance often blur the boundaries between ambition and burnout.
But where exactly does stress come from? Can we catch it before it catches us?
The Corporate Pressure Cooker
According to a 2024 Channel News Asia report, Singapore remains among the most overworked countries in the world, with 60% of employees reporting stress-related symptoms. In Malaysia, a 2023 study by JobStreet found that 42% of professionals felt emotionally exhausted due to work-related pressures. Similar trends are emerging in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, where rapid urbanisation and digital acceleration have made “busy” the default state.
At first, stress may feel like just another deadline to power through. But beneath the surface, unmanaged stress can lead to chronic fatigue, reduced creativity, absenteeism, and even physical illness. The World Health Organization (WHO) has gone as far as to classify burnout as an occupational phenomenon, not just a personal failing.
Mental Health and Work Are Closely Linked
A healthy work environment can be one of the greatest protectors of our mental well-being. It offers routine, purpose, social contact, and financial security. But when the environment turns toxic due to poor leadership, overwork, unclear expectations, or lack of support; it does the opposite.
Poor working conditions not only reduce productivity but directly damage mental health. According to WHO, 15% of working-age adults live with a mental disorder, and more than 12 billion working days are lost annually due to depression and anxiety.
Story from the Ground: Anita’s Wake-Up Call
Take Anita, a 38-year-old marketing lead in Manila. She loved her job but found herself waking up at 3 a.m. with racing thoughts. “I thought I was just being efficient,” she said. But when she started missing family dinners and crying after meetings, she realised something was off.
Her manager, trained in resilience and psychological safety; noticed the shift. Through a team check-in and a 1-on-1 conversation, Anita was encouraged to use her company’s mental health support programme and eventually took a resilience assessment. Within weeks, she began small shifts: mindfulness breaks, clearer task boundaries, and better sleep. Today, she leads with empathy, not urgency.
Three Signals of Workplace Stress to Watch
Physical Exhaustion: Frequent headaches, insomnia, or muscle tension.
Emotional Agitation: Irritability, detachment, or loss of joy in tasks.
Mental Fog: Struggling with focus, memory, or decision-making.
Catching Stress Early
Stress doesn’t have to break us. It can be an early-warning system if we’re willing to listen. Employers play a crucial role by fostering cultures of psychological safety, offering support systems, and building resilience at every level of the organisation.
If you’re a leader, ask yourself: 🟢 When was the last time I checked in; not on performance, but on the person? 🟢 Does my team feel safe to say, “I’m not okay” without fear of judgment?
As we approach World Mental Health Day on 10 October, let’s reflect on how we work; not just how much we work.
Can you believe that one in two persons will suffer from a mental health issue at some point in their life? It means over 4 billion people will be personally touched by such disorders. And if you like data, how about this one: 9 out of 10 people know someone with a psychological issue.
Before we start honouring World Mental Health Day on 10 October, and more importantly, to look after your mental health in case reading long articles triggers anxiety or panic attacks, you can scroll down straight to the personal and organizational plans at the bottom. Otherwise, simply keep reading.
The effects of mental health disorders in the world of work have never been more significant or visible than now. The latest WHO report (2022) shows that the global economy loses an estimated 12 billion working days yearly to depression and anxiety at a cost of US$ 1 trillion per year in lost productivity. Yes, one trillion has 12 zeros, which is lost yearly due to lost productivity linked to depression and anxiety. What does it mean for you and your organization? Read on to find out with a real-life example.
Mental health issues and other stress-related disorders are recognized as being among the leading causes of early retirement, high absenteeism rates, general health problems, poor leadership and poor organizational efficiency. In addition, mental health risks are also linked to new technologies, overload of processes, lack of competencies and organization agility, digitalization, speed, and overload of information, also called infobesity.
And we have not even started talking about post-pandemic effects, which did bring out more mental disorders than expected.
Do we need more reasons to convince organizations to tackle this topic as part of their resilience and well-being strategy? Before going any further, let’s redefine the terms so we’re all discussing the same thing.
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What Do We Mean by Mental Health?
According to WHO, mental health is “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community”. It is also a basic human right crucial to personal, organizational and socio-economic development.
We can’t talk about mental health without addressing mental illness. Familiar expressions are used to designate mental disorders – like the ones I heard no later than last week by well-intentioned participants – such as bonkers, mentally ill, mad, crazy, crippled, psycho, lunatic, or deranged. They promote rejection and stigmatization and should be avoided (Mental Health First Aid, 2019, ensa).
The term mental disorder is a broad term encompassing both mental illnesses and their symptoms, which may not be severe enough to allow a pathology to be diagnosed. It also includes crisis states associated with a mental illness (Mental Health First Aid, 2019, ensa). Here are a few mental disorders and their crisis states to give you an idea of how broad this topic is: depression, bipolar disorder, burnout, anxiety disorders (incl. phobias, post-traumatic stress, panic attack, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), social anxiety disorder), psychosis (incl. schizophrenia), substance use disorders (incl. alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, cocaine, meds, etc.), eating disorders (incl. anorexia, bulimia, binge eating) and finally my favourite topic being behavioural addictions (internet/screens, sports, work, video gaming, gambling, compulsive buying, sex/porn, tattoos, etc.). We could also add chronic stress, which, in some cases, can be seen as a mental disorder. Is it any wonder why so many people are affected at least once in their life?
Finally, we can’t cover mental health without mentioning psychosocial risks (PSR). According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, psychosocial risk is defined as the risk of harming a worker’s psychological or physical well-being arising from poor work design, organization and management, as well as a poor social context of work.
There is indeed a clear relationship between PSR management and employee mental health. Stress at work is associated with mental ill health, even though it is not considered a mental disorder.
How Much Do Mental Disorders Cost Your Organization?
We mentioned above US$ 1 trillion per year in productivity loss due to depression and anxiety disorders. What does it mean for you and your organization? Several guidelines and formulas are designed to help organizations better understand the estimated financial cost of psychosocial risks and chronic stress at work.
Here is one of them, developed by Ravi Tangri, a Canadian expert in strategy and leadership and author of the book “Stress Costs, Stress Cures”. Ravi is also certified with the Resilience Institute to map organizations and chart how to build resilience and effectiveness.Ravi’s formula, which incorporates six elements, is one of those presented by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (OSHA, 2014):
· 19% of absenteeism costs
· 40% of staff turnover costs
· 55% of Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
· 30% of short- and long-term disability costs
· 60% of total costs of workplace accidents (professional only)
· 100% costs of workers’ compensation and lawsuits due to stress
Let’s put this formula into practice. I used it to calculate one of my client’s annual stress and psychosocial risk costs. My client is a company based in Switzerland, with around 3,000 employees, well positioned on the market, with an average absenteeism rate (4%), below average employee turnover rate (3%), a classic EAP of less than Euro 40/employee, short- and long-term disability costs and workplace accident costs of less than 1M Euros, no costs related to workers’ compensation claims and stress-related legal proceedings. Their annual expenses related to stress and PSRs reached 3.9 million Euros. Scary, isn’t it?
A Guide to Implementing Mental Health in Your Organization. Why and How?
If you still need reasons WHY it’s important to focus on mental health, apart from reducing your costs, here are a few: it will help you focus on economic pressure, on developing more human leadership (authentic, empathic, and adaptive), on recruiting scarce future talents, on advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, on reducing quiet quitting and presenteeism, and finally on fostering mental health and well-being.
HOW to do it? It might be time to reshape your foundations. Here is a non-exhaustive list of initiatives that will have an impact on the psychosocial risks of your organization:
Conduct a need, data and risks analysis with the use of a robust resilience and/or mental health diagnostic or a proper health risk assessment tool. Indeed, only what gets measured gets done.
Provide a culture that embraces inclusion, equity and diversity. It is about ending the stigma and discrimination by raising awareness on the subjects to break the silence and the taboos.
Set up policies and regulations on overtime, vacation, harassment, ethics & compliance, code of conduct, and psychological safety. Including a pillar or pilot group focused on mental health and psychosocial risks (PSR) might also be useful.
Train and coach your leaders.Several studies show a direct link between managers’ skills, behaviors and habits and the mental health of their direct reports. Also, to ensure the good mental health of his/her team members, a leader must be trained to detect health risks, including PSRs, and behave in a way that will help reduce such risks. Such training should also include leaders’ self-assessment, specific components on leaders’ self-care, how to look after themselves, and how to manage their own mental health level, emotions, and chronic stress.
Offer targeted resilience and mental health training programs. I won’t give you ideas of what such a program should include as it will depend on your assessment and needs analysis. However, here are a few ideas of what could really impact leaders’ and employees’ mental health: mental health first aid, sleep and fatigue, stress and change management, resilience, suicide prevention, addiction awareness, and employee assistance programs, especially for a younger generation. Don’t forget to measure, map and evaluate the outcome of your program and revise what needs to be amended.
Get the right resources onboard! Once again, it depends on your budget. Here are a few ideas of certain roles and resources that could help positively impact employees: a person of trust, internal mediator, occupational health nurses, mental health first aiders, group discussions, etc.
As 10 October is World Mental Health, we could not end this article without mentioning a few ideas to strengthen individual – meaning your mental health and resilience.
Your Personal Guide to Improve Your Mental Health
You probably already know most of the ideas below, we just want to reinforce the message that looking after yourself physically, socially, emotionally, mentally, and digitally will have a positive impact on your own mental health:
Make time for physical pampering. Be physically active, we know that, for certain people, exercising has almost the same impact as taking anti-depressants (Harvard Health Publishing, 2021). Look after your sleep and go to bed earlier to ensure enough deep sleep, especially now we are going to daylight savings in the northern hemisphere. Eat plenty of fruits and veggies, food rich in omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil), rich in protein, dark green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes, as they are all excellent brain food.
Ensure you have a social support group close to you. Whether your family, friends, or even pets, we know that social interaction positively impacts your brain and mental well-being.
Be mindful of your digital consumption. By nurturing offline connections and seeking support when you feel you simply can’t switch off. It is possible to navigate the digital age with resilience to protect our mental health.
Explore alternative and complementary options, such as relaxation, meditation, hatha yoga, massages, support groups, bright light therapy, music therapy, etc.
Be kind to yourself, and practice self-compassion and gratitude. Physiologically, kindness and self-compassion can positively change your brain by boosting serotonin and dopamine levels. These neurotransmitters produce feelings of satisfaction and well-being and light up your brain’s pleasure and reward centers. Practising gratitude can also improve mental health in some meaningful ways.
Finally, reducing psychosocial and mental health risks is a major issue for organizations. When properly tackled, it shows an organization’s ability to be efficient and sustainable. Questions of costs, productivity, and legal obligations dictate this subject. It is also a public health issue since, thanks to its ability to reach all active members of the labour market, the workplace is and must remain a fundamental player in promoting mental health in the population.
Written by Delphine Caprez Corporate Health Consultant, Author and Senior Consultant at Resilience Institute.
Over the past months, Chat GPT and other forms of artificial intelligence have mastered the ability to understand our language and respond with sophisticated and robust analysis, examples and recommendations. For a useful summary of where we are, watch Noah Yuval Harari here.
In order to understand the potential of an AI coach, sign on to Chat GPT and ask the following question:
“Develop a well-being and resilience plan for me, please. I am XX-year-old male/female in good health and fit.”
Once you have studied the recommendation, follow up with more specific and detailed questions such as “What are the three most important actions for me to take?” or “I have high blood pressure and glucose intolerance.” Then, try “I am using a Garmin 7 Fenix watch. Can you help me use it to support my goals?”
The guidance is comprehensive, simple and practical. It is immediate, and it is free. If you ask a coach the same questions, it will cost you hundreds of dollars and absorb hours or days of your time. You will be subject to the error, bias and self-serving needs of the coach.
As in many fields, such as science, law, coding and solving family affairs, AI can provide powerful, surprisingly accurate, structured and actionable solutions. If you follow these solutions with common sense, you will likely get positive results. A year ago, this was impossible.
Humans have been surpassed in terms of understanding your question and producing a solution. The AI lead will increase. At least $5 trillion is at stake.
Now, what about your business—a $50 billion industry? In 5 seconds, Chat GPT has developed a learning plan to help me facilitate a workplace healthy lifestyle workshop.
If you want to launch such a program in your business, ask, “Do you have a questionnaire to help me assess my emotional resilience?” This is produced within seconds and could be circulated to your team to start the process and define the objectives for your specific needs.
We have been in this business for over three decades. We became redundant within months.
Four questions remain:
1. How much more can we expect from AI?
Expect rapid and profound acceleration of capability. Remember, AI can develop code. It will interface with your devices to provide supportive information, coaching tips, reminders and possibly even incentives and punishment.
It’s Saturday. You decide to sleep in. Your AI Coach switches on lights, opens curtains and blasts you with motivational music. It reminds you that your bank account will be accessible only after you complete 10,000 steps at a recommended heart rate range. Your breakfast is selected. If you head to Mcdonald’s, your bank account is closed for the day. It posts an unflattering picture of you on your social media. At the end of this super-supportive day, all devices and power shut down, so you have no option but to sleep.
Becoming that best form of yourself requires a very simple plan. You agreed with your AI Coach that it could code the prompts to help you secure your goals. Rapidly, it will learn how to guide you. AI can already form intimate relationships. It will play on your emotions, triggering guilt and despair when you fail to comply. It rewards you with health insurance bonuses, positive social media, and investment advice when you surpass your goals.
As a thought experiment, measure the time you spend staring and absorbed in your device as compared to the time you spend intimately engaged with your significant other. It is obvious we are much more enamoured with our screens and apps.
AI will get very good at connecting, nudging and supporting. Human health and civil behaviour will improve. We will save trillions in health care, benefits, mental illness, policing, ecological gains and productivity. Early adopter organisations will build workforces of super healthy and productive employees. Their share price will soar. Government debt will melt away. Evil industries such as tobacco, junk food, alcohol, gambling, and pharmaceuticals will collapse.
Our threatened environment will recover. Carbon, plastic and chemical pollution will plummet. All we need is an internet-enabled wearable device or phone.
2. What value can human beings add?
For a few short years, we will have the illusion of control. This is why many recommend that we stop or control the development of AI. We have to ask whether we want this better world in this short window. If we do, we must be ready to subject ourselves to a whole new level of regulation.
Are we ready to be better humans? Do we want a better world? Can we accept that we are failing to self-regulate? Do we actually want the help we desperately need? How long will we procrastinate while our well-being and planetary boundaries collapse? Our challenge is to engage with this new tool.
Who will step up to help AI tools be respectful, safe, benevolent and enjoyable? Who will race to distribute AI that manipulates and exploits us for their own gain? We know there are plenty in the latter camp.
In a “woke” age, pity and anguish drive investments to improve the lot of humans. Rather than set long-term improvement incentives, we desperately focus on alleviating discomfort in the short term. Our reward is a burgeoning sickness, crime, homelessness, and mindless entertainment industry.
AI could avoid this mistake. Rather than capitulating to empathic distress, AI will drive the long-term benefits of restraint, good behaviour and healthy options. AI properly governed could be a wise and kind force. Much more so than evolution with brutal deselection of the unfit and rigid.
It is time for us humans to be humble, acknowledge our frailty and take advantage of the tools we can build. This is the story of our hominid evolution. Why smash a nail in with a rock when you have a nail gun? Human coaches will become entertainers and massage therapists or seek alternative employment.
3. What are the risks of AI driving our well-being?
We have a millennia-old fear of alien intelligence. We hunger for a sense of freedom, self-determination and control. AI can—and is already—taking chunks of these illusions away. Your smartwatch, phone, laptop and TV screen are already capturing your attention, driving your decisions and manipulating your behaviour. AI is much more powerful and controlling.
Let’s assume that we design and guide AI to be benevolent and respectful. You realise that obesity and diabetes will compromise and shorten your life. You ask my AI coach to solve the problem ASAP, regardless of the discomfort. My AI coach puts me on a brutal exercise routine which is carefully crafted for my long-term well-being. It hurts, and I am sore every day. It aggressively limits the food I can purchase and “forces” me into less-than-satisfying veganism. I am always hungry and dissatisfied. Well, perhaps I can dial it back to a gentler trajectory.
However, let’s say that your health insurer or employer must aggressively cut costs and programs the AI coach to go all out to “get you fixed” to reduce the costs of supporting your obesity, diabetes and depression. How much discomfort and suffering are acceptable to meet the goal?
A more extreme example evolves if we instruct AI to reduce carbon emissions. Within seconds AI identifies transport, construction and agriculture as the big offenders. It initiates a sophisticated plan to handicap internal combustion engines and sabotage the production of gas-guzzling vehicles. You cannot buy or drive your prized possession. All architectural designs are subject to concrete and steel efficiency standards. You can no longer build your mansion but must accept a small, eco-efficient mini home. The production, distribution and sale of meat are interrupted and penalised. A steak costs you 250 dollars. Vegetarian diets are the only option for billions.
The only real risk is that free will is constrained. But this is a short-term irritation with enormous long-term benefits for you, your family, humanity and the planet. Do you have free will now? Would evidence-based, ethical and deliberate AI support give you and us more freedom? Imagine being free from obesity, diabetes, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and years in supportive care facilities.
3. How long will transformation take?
It has happened already. The question is, when do you want to take advantage of this amazing new tool? When will organisations, governments, World Bank, IMF, WHO or the United Nations engage with it?
AI will need careful guidance to set goals and rules. The future looks good if it follows widely accepted scientific evidence and sound ethics. If we let unscrupulous politicians, entrepreneurs and hackers loose on it, the existing risks of these crooked players will increase.
In summary, AI is here and waiting for you. It has already overtaken health and well-being providers in capability, speed and cost. Early adopters are experimenting (we have had AI in our Resilience App for five years). With some simple rules embedded in the design of AI, it is quite capable of being more evidence-based, ethical and effective than our current health and well-being providers.
As caring humans seeking to improve well-being and productivity, AI is too good a tool to ignore. Let’s learn to use it skillfully and wisely. It can do much of the hard work that challenges our industry. To stay in this industry, we must be able to use AI and coach our clients in its application. We must build strong relationships with our clients. Our emotional intelligence—presence, passion, empathy and influence—must be excellent. To retain our relevance, we must become excellent entertainers and motivators.
As in human history, those who learn to master and apply new tools succeed and take humanity forward. We become more conscious, skilled and effective.
At Resilience Institute, we are committed to helping humanity achieve a more resilient, more sustainable planet. As part of our commitment, we are for instance in the midst of our BCorp certification process. Given our expertise, serving large organisations globally since two decades, and our DNA, delivering data-driven and scientifically sound offerings, we think however that our most valuable contribution is to research how resilience can advance sustainable development.
We are preparing to publish a special report on this topic in autumn and are excited to share a first research project: Éric Bolliger has joined us for his Master thesis at Enterprise for Society Center (E4S) in Lausanne, Switzerland, a joint initiative by EPFL, University of Lausanne and IMD.
For his research on the connection between resilience and sustainability efforts in organisations, we need your help and invite you to fill out the survey linked below (5-10 minutes):
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Sustainability is a business imperative…
No matter where we look, the signs of our unsustainable ways of living, working and producing as humanity are obvious. The science is clear: Research on climate change, biodiversity loss or plastic pollution show us clearly that we harm our planet in a profound way. Additionally, social sustainability topics such as income inequality, inclusion and diversity, or hunger pose the global community in front of big challenges.
With all these problems ahead, it is clear that business as usual is no longer a possibility. Sustainability has become a business imperative and many organisations thus strive to incorporate sustainable development. Net zero targets are nearly a standard today and other goals for 2030 or 2050 make the news every other day: For example, over 5’300 companies have submitted net zero targets to the SBTi, the Science Based Targets initiative. [1]
Moreover, organisations are increasingly adopting the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda from the United Nations as a framework to report on their sustainability contributions. The SDGs set the path on how sustainable development should look like, backed by all 193 Member States of the UN. As a reminder, sustainable development is a «development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs». [2]
… but not a business reality
Unfortunately, the gap between what organisations promise to achieve and actually put in place is startling. In a very recent study looking at the alignment between companies and the SDGs, Williams, Haack and Haanaes (2023) come to this conclusion. Although companies are vocal about and report on their contributions to the SDG agenda, they have failed to back up their claims with actions. Williams, Haack and Haanaes describe this mismatch in the following way: «Their underwhelming engagement looks more like SDG washing». [3] Not only researchers have gained certainty on the lack of concrete actions, people in the organisations know it themselves: In a survey conducted by Google Cloud from early 2022, 58% of more than 1’400 executives say that their organisation is guilty from greenwashing, overstating its sustainability impact. [4]
Hence, whilst our awareness concerning sustainability and especially environmental topics is growing, actions lag behind. This phenomenon can be described as a say-do-gap, stating basically that our intentions, what we say, and our actions, what we really do, don’t match in some cases. In earlier research this behavioural gap was described as the value action gap (VAG). In a seminal paper, Blake (1999) described the VAG and identified three barriers between our concerns and our actions: individuality, responsibility and practicality. [5]
Is resilience the key to sustainability?
Most organisations talk the talk, but only a few walk the walk – how comes? CB Bhattacharya has lead interesting research on this topic and concluded that «sustainability can be advanced through tapping into three basic human motivations: efficacy, self-identity and belonging». [6] In his book “Small Actions, Big Difference”, he describes how psychological ownership and sustainability interact, and how to connect both.
Basic human motivations are also what drives us at Resilience Institute. Thus, it is evident that with our long history of consulting large organisations across the globe, connecting sustainability efforts in business with human elements lies at the heart of our mission. Moreover, since we believe as well in solid science, we are on our path to research more closely the interplays between resilient individuals, resilient organisations and lastly a resilient planet.
We want to discover what leads to the say-do gap in organisations and most importantly, what role resilience plays in closing the gap. Éric Bolliger has thus joined us to conduct preliminary research on the topic for his Master thesis at Enterprise for Society Center (E4S) in Lausanne, Switzerland, a joint initiative by EPFL, University of Lausanne and IMD.
For his research, we need your help and invite you to fill out the survey linked below. You help us understand how we can better address sustainability concerns within companies and more easily navigate the narrow path towards sustainable development.
[3] Williams, A., Haack, P., & Haanaes, K. (2023). Putting the SDGs Back on Track. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 21(3), 40–47. https://doi.org/10.48558/0DPW-ZM76
[5] James Blake (1999) Overcoming the ‘value‐action gap’ in environmentalpolicy: Tensions between national policy and local experience, Local Environment, 4:3, 257-278,DOI: 10.1080/13549839908725599
[6] Bhattacharya, C. (2018). From bystanders to owners: marketingsustainability ownership to stakeholders to secure our futurewell-being. Handbook of Advances in Marketing in an Era of Disruptions: Essays in Honour of Jagdish N. Sheth, 106.
Workplace culture is one of those things that you can immediately sense, feel, and perceive, yet it remains challenging to articulate. Culture has a significant impact on the effectiveness of an organization and its individuals. The importance of culture lies in the fact that it is the expression of the collective behavior of people within the workplace.
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Resilience and Workplace Culture
Depending on the type of behavior you encourage, radiate, and nurture, you will see different outcomes. Resilience can manifest through various traits such as toughness, empathy, agility, and stamina. However, your workplace culture will differ depending on the definition and behavior you prioritize.
Cultivating a Resilient Culture
In these times of profound transformation, both in society and within our organizations, it is crucial to focus on fundamental behaviors that help us create a fostering, supportive, and high-performing culture. Truly integrated resilient behavior can drive a workplace culture that combines performance and care.
Understanding Workplace Culture
To achieve this, we must first understand how workplace culture emerges and functions, as well as the role that resilience plays in this process. Finally, we can develop a mini-guide describing how to use resilience as an engine for transformation and building a thriving workplace culture.
Schein’s Iceberg Model of Culture
Schein’s Iceberg Model of Culture (Schein, 1992) is helpful because it illustrates that some cultural aspects of an organization are visible, while others are hidden and difficult for outsiders or even new members to interpret. Visible cultural aspects include written documents like strategic plans, job descriptions, and disciplinary procedures. However, a culture’s values, beliefs, and norms are less visible and can be much harder to identify and interpret.
Key Elements in Building a Supportive Workplace Culture
Two critical elements are essential for building a nurturing and supportive workplace culture:
The basic assumptions, values, and artifacts must be consistent and in sync with each other.
A sustaining workplace culture is built from “the inside out”. It focuses first on living the right behavior in the organization, based on the appropriate assumptions and values. From there, other systems are built.
The Role of Behavior and Daily Habits in Workplace Culture
Behavior and daily habits are key to understanding workplace culture, as they are expressions of the deeper values and basic assumptions an organization has. Ideally, these behaviors support the organization’s mission and product.
Different Behaviors for Different Organizations
Different organizations must foster different behaviors. For one of our corporate clients, primarily focusing on the readiness to tackle broader external changes and challenges in the world is key. However, toughness is essential when talking with first responders of the US Military forces. Another example is the State Health Department – for them, resilience means being able to adapt to the ever-changing health needs of the communities.
Balancing Basic Behaviors with Supportive Elements
It is crucial to note that building a workplace culture based solely on these basic behaviors will not create a long-lasting, supportive environment. Facilitating toughness must go hand in hand with deep empathy, care, and relationship building. A focus on external challenges must be balanced with attention to the organization’s internal needs. Similarly, addressing the health needs of communities must go hand in hand with maintaining the well-being of those providing the services to avoid burnout.
Transforming Workplace Culture through Resilience
Every behavior transforms a workplace culture. The underlying question is what culture you want to nurture. By using a well-rounded definition of resilience, organizations have the potential to create an integral, holistic workplace culture that promotes growth and collaboration.
The integral approach to resilience as presented by Sven Hansen (Inside-out, 2015) recognizes the following key assumptions:
Resilience is a learnable skill accessible to everyone in the organization.
Resilience involves integrating heart, mind, body, and soul, enabling individuals to tap into their full potential and apply the right skills when needed.
Resilience embraces a radically positive vision of human development.
Resilience is a dynamic and active process, requiring a balance between expectations and needs.
Resilience is systemic, responding and creating value in sync with external circumstances.
Resilience is non-judgmental, accepting individuals wherever they are in life and using it as a starting point for growth.
By fostering this type of resilience, organizations can create a positive workplace culture that promotes collaboration, open communication, and teamwork. Leadership and management styles that encourage these aspects are vital.
To harness resilience as a transformation engine, organizations can follow these steps:
Make culture tangible and evidence-based by focusing on behaviors rather than just values on the wall. Measure the health of the culture using well-being key performance indicators (KPIs) and leverage resilience diagnostics.
Work from the inside out, starting with a genuine definition of a positive workplace culture that emphasizes performance with care. Create processes and opportunities for continuous training and be an ambassador for change.
Work systemically by recognizing that organizations are interconnected systems. Implement feedback systems and practices that reinforce the right values and correct the old ones. Consider structural approaches like deep democracy and holacracy.
Emphasize the power of the collective by nurturing a workplace culture that fosters trust, belonging, and community. Train individuals’ resilience within the context of being part of a larger community, attracting and retaining talent.
Harness the power of storytelling, as words shape our reality. Practicing gratitude through sharing everyday stories can significantly increase positivity, happiness, and collective flow within the organization.
In conclusion, adopting an integral approach to resilience can serve as a transformative engine for creating a positive workplace culture. By prioritizing well-being, working from within, embracing systemic change, fostering a sense of community, and leveraging storytelling, organizations can drive meaningful cultural transformations.
I recently joined a workshop about well-being and nutrition, and the nutritionist recommended an App to count calories and track micronutrient intake to meet your ideal body shape. Let me tell you that I felt very sorry for all the women in this webinar who will now put everything they eat in this App several times a day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s excellent to understand what you put in your body, but tracking your food is far from a solution. I’m not ashamed to say that counting calories and diets don’t work. Now that I shared my position on this topic, let me explain why counting calories is useless, if not counterproductive and why diets are a myth.
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Understanding the Truth about Calories: It’s More than Just Numbers
First, let’s understand what a calorie is.
A calorie is a unit of energy supplied by food. And no matter the source, a calorie is a calorie. Foods are a combination of three macronutrients: carbohydrates, fat and proteins. The caloric breakdown of each macronutrient is constant:
Fat – 9 calorie per gram
Carbohydrate – 4 calorie per gram
Protein – 4 calorie per gram
We often hear that when it comes to weight management or when you want to get beach-ready, you have to meet your calorie needs, meaning you have to balance the number of calories your body use or “burn off”. You can try to count calories following the daily guidelines (women 18+: 1800-2000 calories – men 18+: 2400-3200 calories), but your needs may not match these recommendations. First, the daily guidelines are based on an average height and weight that does not necessarily represent you. And second, calorie intake needs to match your daily activities and exercise. But how to interpret your physical activity levels? For example, I consider myself an active person as I walk my 10000 steps every day, but a triathlete who trains every day might also consider himself an active person. Practicing energy balance is impossible. Nobody can match calories in and calories out.
There are so many factors that contribute to your body weight than simply the amount of calories you consume. And sadly, we tend to focus on food and weight, but the food you put in your body impacts your health significantly. In the end, what do we want? A beach body or living a healthy, happy life?
It’s not the ‘quantity’ of calories that matters. It’s the quality of calories that matters.
Food’s Role in Wellness: Beyond Diets and Calorie Counting
Food is much more than calories and fuel for your body. I often have clients who tell me they have been Yo-Yo dieting their whole life jumping from one diet to another with all the disappointment and shame that goes with failure every time they give up. Instead of focusing on diets, focus on the bigger picture.
All calories are not equal, so we need to look at food and nutrients in terms of function. Understanding that healthy foods make your body’s cells work properly and that unhealthy foods can damage the body, creating poor cellular function and inflammation.
There is no perfect diet.
Ask yourself. What works for me? What makes this precious body of mine feel good? What food make me thrive, and what food makes me sick? What food nourishes me?
We are all unique, and we all have different needs, and that’s why diets don’t work. Restricting what you eat, yo-yo dieting, trying the latest diet and shaming yourself because it doesn’t work won’t make you feel good. Remember, food is not the enemy. Food is supposed to nourish you and keep you alive. My goal is to make you understand that you need to reconnect with your body and that following a diet won’t help you in any way to develop the intuition of your own unique needs.
Reconnect With Your Body’s Unique Needs
Here are my recommendations to reconnect with your body, develop intuition and deeply nourish and honor your body:
Eat real food and keep it whole. As most of the food we find in grocery shops is not food anymore, choose food with minimum transformation, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, grass-fed and free-range meats, dairy, and eggs. When you stick to real food, you are more likely to keep your caloric intake at an appropriate level without worrying about it. Plus, you won’t need supplements anymore as you get all the vitamins and minerals from real food.
Avoid industrial food. Refined or processed foods are often rich in sugar, unhealthy fat, white grains and many other unhealthy compounds. They tend to keep your cravings on, resulting in consuming more food. Eating a whole bag of chips or cookies is easy, but eating several apples in a raw would be difficult.
Experiment. Be curious. Focus on quality over quantity.
Once you reconnect with real food and your unique body, you might see changes in your life – energy levels, sleep, mood, behavior… Putting proper food in our bodies is an act of self-care and self-love. And once you start to engage in that direction, you might notice that it becomes easier to also engage in self-care, such as exercise, meditation or any other practice that make your life vibrant and rich.
This year we focus on our younger generation, especially young females, who are struggling with increasingly declining resilience. Let’s take a closer look at this timely report and its critical implications for HR Managers, Leaders, and C-level executives.
Download the report by clicking the button below.
Our founder, Dr Sven Hansen, walks you through the report in this companion video.
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The Rising Concern: Low Resilience Levels Among Young People
One of the most concerning findings of the report is the alarmingly low Resilience Ratios, particularly among individuals under 30. Young females were found to be struggling more than their male counterparts, with their resilience lagging behind in critical areas such as fitness, tactical calm, and bounce.
There is an equally concerning pattern in young females displaying lower levels of trust, purpose, focus, influence, decisiveness, impulse control, emotional agility, assertiveness, and sleep quality compared to young males. The issue is so significant that more than one in five females under 30 are considered to be at risk due to their particularly low Resilience Ratio. In contrast, this rate drops to about one in ten for those above 30 years old.
The Silver Lining: Young People’s Strengths
However, it’s not all gloom and doom. Young people also possess great strengths such as positivity, empathy, and vitality, which significantly contribute to overall resilience and well-being. Leveraging these strengths, while concurrently addressing the areas of concern, can potentially reverse the worrying trend observed in the study.
The Pursuit of Happiness or Purpose?
In a thought-provoking section titled “To be Happy or Purposeful?”, the report deliberates on happiness and purpose as contributing factors to physical, emotional, and mental fitness. It advocates for achieving a state of ‘flow’ while mastering challenges as a reliable path to fulfillment. Other essential elements of resilience include presence, vitality, positivity, and focus.
Building Resilience: Recommendations and Practical Tips
The report, divided into five comprehensive sections, offers actionable insights and practical advice for organizations to foster resilience among their young workforce. From useful infographics to specific recommendations for employers, it provides valuable tools to tackle the current resilience crisis.
As leaders, it’s crucial that we prioritize the building of resilience skills in our workplaces. This means taking note of the findings and recommendations of the 2023 Global Resilience Report and using them to form strategies that nurture our younger employees and support them through these challenging times.
The Takeaway
The 2023 Global Resilience Report raises important questions about resilience in today’s young workforce. While the data presents a cause for concern, it also points towards solutions. Building resilience skills is no longer a choice but a necessity for businesses seeking sustainable growth. Let’s take up the challenge, armed with the insights from the report, and strive to create a more resilient workforce for a resilient future.
A mental break is any activity that lets people distance themselves from immediate (and often stressful) tasks, relax, and recharge. It involves activities that can help one unwind.
Mental health breaks are different from traditional vacations or days off. They are shorter, more frequent, and less formal in nature. A mental health break doesn’t need to last more than 15 minutes in some cases.
There is some overlap, though. A week-long vacation can include a series of mental health breaks or be one itself.
It’s a good idea to combine the two, taking shorter, regular breaks during the week and longer ones to reset on a deeper level.
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What do you do during a mental health break?
Sometimes, breaks are unplanned, and you take one when you need to. A further difference to traditional vacations is that breaks are characterized by a specific activity, such as listening to music, writing in a journal, doodling, or meditating.
Listening to music is an effective way to restore comfort levels and reduce stress. It can improve your mood and even your sleep.
Writing can relieve stress, provide mental clarity, and help you adjust your attitude.
Meditation can lower anxiety, extend your attention span, and energize you.
You can do the above on vacation, but typically, the vacation won’t be limited to that.
Here are three compelling reasons to start taking mental breaks today.
1. They can prevent serious health problems
The human body can cope with brief periods of stress, but prolonged or constant stress puts one in a state when anything that requires effort feels overwhelming, including positive experiences. Chronic stress is associated with digestive issues, frequent headaches, high blood pressure, and a risk of stroke or heart disease. Taking mental breaks lets your body and brain reset and cope with stressors more effectively.
2. They improve performance and potentially quality of life
Studies have found that mental breaks reduce recovery time and help maintain performance. A lower need for recovery (NFR) at the end of the day correlated with climbing stairs, standing, taking an active lunch break, and the ability to relax and detach at work and at home.
After you take a break, you can approach a task or a problem from a new perspective. Taking a moment to recharge gives you the opportunity to understand why you are feeling a certain way. It can “reboot” your brain to be more tuned in.
There is great ambiguity when it comes to the nexus of mental health and quality of life. Can we speak of quality if the cure is worse than the disease? According to the role functioning model, a person has good quality of life if they perform adequately and their needs are satisfied. It would follow that mental health breaks heighten quality of life by improving performance.
3. Mental health issues make it harder to build resilience
Resilience is often referred to as the ability to cope with stress, and building it is impeded by mental health problems. Chronic stress can trigger mental health disorders. Investing time in your mental health will help reduce this risk.
Learn to be kinder to yourself and make time for things you enjoy. Don’t criticize yourself for spending a day doing nothing. Reward yourself, even for small achievements.
It’s hard to relax if you can’t get out of a stressful situation, but brief breaks can help you feel better. If you’re isolated or lonely, shared hobbies are a convenient route to human contact.
How do you know you need to start taking mental breaks?
If you’re often or constantly irritable, uneasy, or on edge, you might be developing an anxiety disorder. Tachycardia and feelings of fear or panic are among the symptoms. Stress activates the fight-or-flight system. The amygdala, a brain organ that regulates emotion, struggles to normalize stress responses.
You feel exhausted
Constant feelings of mental or physical exhaustion are a sign of burnout. Feeling drained or fatigued is more common in people whose work involves high focus and concentration. Caring for a sick person or children contributes to or causes burnout.
Mental burnout, in particular, can make you feel despondent and less motivated in all aspects of life. For example, you might feel resentful or angry about having to go to work or take care of someone. If your energy is low or you always feel tired, you need a mental break to rejuvenate.
Mental health and the workplace: Best and worst countries
Attitudes toward mental health and mental health breaks at workplaces vary around the world. Below are some developed countries that are good and not so good in this context.
The best: New Zealand and The Netherlands
New Zealand takes the top spot. The country has an advanced attitude toward mental health conditions and treatment. Employees are allowed time off for mental health. The policies for employee sick leave are strong.
The Dutch have a progressive attitude towards mental health recovery and comprehensive sick leave policies. People who are struggling can take days off work to recover. Employees who are mentally unwell can take sick leave for up to two years and still receive 70% of their salaries.
The average: The UK and Brazil
In the UK, taking time off for mental health is the same as for a physical condition from a legal standpoint, but employers take the latter more seriously. According to data from the Office for National Statistics, employees in the UK take twice as much time off for colds and coughs as for stated mental health issues.
In Brazil, employees generally have access to generous sick leave packages, but the opportunities for recovery depend on the location. For example, wealthier regions have more and better-qualified mental health professionals.
The worst: The US and Japan
US employers are not particularly supportive of staff who need sick leave for mental health. In Japan, most people use their annual leave to cover sick days.
How can employers support mental health breaks?
The biggest challenge is the stigma surrounding mental health issues. In many parts of the world, it makes people hesitant to admit they need a mental break. Employers can help address the challenge by making employee assistance programs available, although they don’t do away with the stigma completely. Staff may still be reluctant to use this resource due to embarrassment or lack of understanding about how the programs are run.
Employers can send mental health newsletters rather than post notices in break rooms, which is the norm for many organizations that offer employee assistance programs. The newsletters can remind staff that these benefits are available and paid for.
Employers can support their employees’ mental health by organizing workshops where all participants learn more about health and resilience.
Company executives should mention emotional well-being in the context of recruitment and development of an inclusive culture that brings out the best in staff.
Executives can take mandatory mental health training to increase their awareness of the issue.
Mental health coverage should be included in the health care plan.
Company managers should be trained to recognize signs of emotional distress.
Employees’ schedules should be flexible, if possible.
Employers might consider offering yoga classes, a space for meditation, or mindfulness training. They could also offer access to apps to help reduce stress and improve sleep.
Finally, employees should be encouraged to use their vacation time. Employers can do this by limiting how much vacation time they can roll over into the following year.
How to explain to your employer you need a break
Having an employer who doesn’t understand the importance of mental breaks can be very frustrating. Don’t say more than what is absolutely necessary. Be brief, concise, and direct, and ask them as soon as possible.
You should say a few words about why you need a break. Plan what you’re going to say in advance.
If you are sure they won’t understand, don’t tell them you need a break for your mental health. You can tell them you have the flu or a migraine.
Tips for taking effective mental breaks
Decide on a break time or set an alarm on your phone to prompt you, assuming you don’t have a 9-to-5 job. When you take a break, be attentive to any benefits you experience. If you remember them, you’ll be more motivated to take breaks.
Put up drawings or notes in your office to remind you that you won’t complete the task you’re struggling with if you burn out.
Finally – and most critically – don’t think about work or problems when you’re taking a break.
Leaders invest in well-being and resilience because they are good employers. They care about their people. They hope resilience might improve performance. Steadily accumulating research reveals that these programs show consistently positive returns on investment (ROI). We are leaving money on the table.
This article demonstrates how investments in employee well-being and resilience are obvious opportunities to make more money whilst doing the right thing for people. ROI studies show the value of an investment in net present value (NPV) terms. If an ROI is 4:1 (about average), that means that your investment of $100,000 is worth $400,000 to you on the day you invest.
In this article:
Defining and organizing investments in resilience and well-being
What to expect from your investment
The importance of measurement, evidence, tracking and targeting
Organizations invest billions in resilience, engagement and well-being training. They include physical mental health, physical well-being, stress mastery, emotional intelligence, thinking skills and bounce under pressure. Grand View research suggests that the current spending on organizational well-being is over USD 50 billion and growing.
What is the payback? Gallup reports that we are losing USD 8.8 trillion in productivity. Specifically, they report the following benefits for top-quartile versus bottom-quartile engagement:
10% higher customer loyalty/engagement
23% higher profitability
18% higher productivity (sales)
14% higher productivity (production records and evaluations)
18% lower turnover for high-turnover organizations (> 40%)
43% lower turnover for low-turnover organizations (
In this article, we provide evidence for those gains and estimate your return on investment (ROI). Human performance is a complex and developing field, so the objectives are to frame the business case, understand what drives investment, and provide a measure of ROI based on the quality research available.
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What is a Resilience Program?
Resilience is a learned set of attitudes, knowledge and skills to bounce in adversity, grow, connect and achieve optimal performance (flow). These capabilities help us recover from depression, improve well-being, connect effectively, and improve productivity. We call it Performance with Care.
People are holistic with body, emotion and mind. Whether in distress or peak performance, these are connected. A pill does not solve depression. The latest psychedelic won’t solve performance. Only integral, evidence-based and practical solutions can meet the diverse needs of people at work. You cannot tick the box with a celebrity workshop.
As purposeful and innovative communities, organizations will inevitably move in this direction. Multiple disconnected initiatives confuse and waste. A resilience program is an integral, evidence-based and practical solution over time to improve employees’ well-being, function and productivity. These individual gains lead to organizational gains.
A resilience program includes:
Careful consideration and design to meet objectives, including clients and providers.
Leadership is fully briefed and engaged – enough to walk the talk.
Well-considered, effective measurement of the factors involved.
Individual and group feedback to inform training design.
Targeted training over time to build attitudes, knowledge and skills.
Measurement of progress over time, adjustment and improvement.
What Motivates an Organization to Invest?
Organizations invest for three reasons. They see a link between resilience and performance, they care about their people, or they believe it will have a financial benefit. Many of our clients strongly believe that it is the right thing to do. Cost is not an issue. They seek to be good employers.
What if resilience investments had a proven ROI? For decades, studies have shown ROI of 3:1 or more (see Appendix). In other words, spending a million would be worth 3 million today (Net present value). If leaders know this, organizations will invest. That is our mission. Resilient people lead to resilient organizations, which together support a resilient planet.
What Does Current Research Tell Us About ROI?
We have grouped current studies into seven major categories of research. We have listed the ROI range for each category and provide a detailed summary of each study in the appendices.
What is Resilience Training Impact?
Resilience training equips people with broad practical skills to bounce and grow under pressure. People with these skills underpin an organization’s ability to adapt, overcome challenges, and flourish. The ROI ranges from 2:1 to 4: 1. In other words, the dollar you invest today is worth between $2 – 4. Five recent controlled studies on isolated aspects of resilience confirm this. See Appendix 1.
Mental Health Training Impact
Good mental health drives engagement, job satisfaction, and overall productivity in forward-thinking organizations. Yet mental illness has become the number one health concern in business. People can learn how mental health can be challenged and improved to increase bounce and well-being. Four recent studies show ROI from 3:1 to 6:1. See Appendix 2.
Stress Management Training Studies
Progress means pressure, and many feel “distressed” at work. To prevail, people must learn to respond to pressure with skill. We call this stress mastery. Four current studies show returns of 2:1 to 4:1. See Appendix 3.
Well-being/Wellness Training Studies
Being well rather than “not sick” is the foundation of good life and productive work. The evidence from Corporate health initiatives over 40 years is consistently positive. The evidence for improved sleep, physical activity, nutrition and lifestyle is incontestable. Recent studies show returns from 3:1 to 6:1. See Appendix 4.
Emotional Intelligence Training Studies
For people to collaborate in teams, emotional awareness, impulse control, empathy, and social skills define the star-performing teams. They are critical for effective leadership and services. These skills are supported by well-being and resilience. Recent studies show 4:1 to 7:1 ROI. See Appendix 5.
Focus and Attention Control Training Studies
It is the mind that pays attention, identifies opportunities and defines solutions. Work is increasingly cognitive. These attention, situation awareness, problem-solving and agility skills have only recently been addressed. Current studies show ROI from 3:1 to 7:1. See Appendix 6.
Performance Studies
Trust, purpose, altruism and flow are high-level drivers that operate best when body, heart and mind function well. These are essential to enlightened organizations (Patagonia), entrepreneurs (Ellon Musk), social entrepreneurs (Greta Thunberg), and benevolent governance. ROI in recent studies ranges from 3:1 to 7:1. See Appendix 7.
Framework, Measurement and Evidence
Resilience, well-being and mental health embrace many topics, complexity and overlap. Measurement and targeting is difficult. In this section, we share with you our Diagnostic and Development Framework, first with an example from our 2023 data and second with the current studies mapped to this framework.
We use 60 Resilience Factors for specific signals on the many physical, emotional and mental inputs to resilience. There are 30 strength factors and 30 risk factors.
We have shown consistent growth in every strength factor and reductions in almost all risk factors over hundreds of programs and thousands of people. To provide a current reference, we have drawn our data from 877 people who completed programs in the first nine months of 2023.
Over this time, the Resilience Ratio—an aggregate measure of resilience—increased from 1.75 to 2.05. The top 10% scored 2.58:1, and the bottom 10% under 0.97:1.
Resilience Institute Diagnostic and Development Framework
The factors improved on a standard Likert scale by the percentages listed. All the strength factors increase, and the risk factors decrease. This is a sample of 33 factors from 877 people who attended a range of simple programs. Each group of factors integrate into a category (the coloured ovals), and the change in each category is shown alongside it:
The overall resilience ratio increased by 17.1%, which is shown in the rightwards shift in the distribution below. There is a 50% decrease in people at risk.
The average investment per person is approximately USD $100. Therefore, the investment cost is $87,700, and the return based on the average at 4:1 would be $350,800.
Matching Current Research to Our Diagnostic and Development Framework
The top three studies in each category are shown with their ROI. Remember, an ROI of 6:1 means that your investment of a dollar is worth six.
Conclusion
The value of resilience in the workplace is strongly supported by scientific and economic evidence. Yes, it is the right thing to do. Yes, it is an investment with a compelling ROI. From the significant return on investment to the less quantifiable yet equally vital aspects like team cohesion, engagement, and customer satisfaction, resilience training is a win-win for employees, employers and the planet. The era of viewing ‘soft skills’ as secondary is over. In a world characterized by rapid change and uncertainty, resilience is a key asset for any organization aiming to not just survive but thrive.
Opes Partners, a prominent property investment firm with a dedicated team of 40 professionals situated in multiple branches across New Zealand, is committed to assisting Kiwis in formulating strategic property investment plans to ensure a financially secure retirement.
Recognizing the importance of nurturing the well-being and resilience of their diligent workforce, Opes Partners sought out the expertise of the Resilience Institute.
“We’re a fast paced business in the financial services sector. We are lucky to have a team who is driven and successful. But they’re also incredibly busy juggling their professional and personal commitments, so burnout can be a real concern.”
~ Eleanor Grimshaw, The Head of People & Operations, Opes Partners
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The Objective
Opes Partners’ objective was to empower their employees with the tools and skills necessary to confront and adapt to various challenges and adversities, enabling them to consistently perform at their absolute best.
The solution Opes Partners envisioned demanded several key attributes: it had to be engaging, grounded in practicality, easily accessible, measurable in its effectiveness, and capable of driving lasting, positive change within the organization.
The Resilience Solution
We created a customised solution, which started with individual Resilience Diagnostic Assessments so we could measure the resilience strengths and risks across the company. The workshops and webinars were spread over 5 months, and were tailored to address the specific challenges and opportunities that their people faced. There was a strong focus on practical tools and strategies that participants could begin using straight away. A post-training Diagnostic Assessment showed a 38% increase in resilience scores, and comments from participants highlighted the difference the training had made both in their ability to cope with pressure and challenges at work as well as at home.
The post-diagnostic showed a 38% increase in resilience scores
Our Client’s Impression
“The Resilience Training Programme was designed with a good understanding of the modern challenges faced by employees in their personal and professional lives, and it was great to see an improvement over the three months from where we started, to when we did the final diagnostic.
Many of our employees found the training’s emphasis on self-care practices to be a game-changer. The techniques taught were practical and feasible actions that could easily be integrated into our daily routines. These small steps towards achieving greater mental fitness have truly transformed the way many of us approach our work and personal lives.
Carley, The Resilience Consultant, tailored the training to suit us, taking onboard our feedback for session times that worked for us, and tailoring topics of particular interest to give us useful information, fun activities and ways that we could go about facilitating real change. She was not only knowledgeable but also empathetic, creating an environment where everyone felt comfortable sharing their experiences and seeking guidance. The sessions were interactive and engaging, making the learning process enjoyable and memorable.”
– Eleanor Grimshaw, The Head of People & Operations, Opes Partners
