Resilience Reimagined: Why Has Resilience Fallen Out of Favour?

In today’s fast-paced and demanding work environments, resilience has been celebrated as the key to navigating challenges and stress.

We recently conducted a temperature-check poll, which revealed that 38% of our audience believes “resilience” needs rethinking, and nearly a quarter feel the term has been overused.

Why is this?

While resilience is often seen as a sign of strength, the overemphasis on resilience as a buzzword may have led to unrealistic expectations and misinterpreted meaning. This has resulted in resilience becoming a byword for suppressing emotions, or “looking on the bright side” stoicism, leading to negative sentiment.

So, what does resilience actually mean?

The noun ‘resilience’ is defined as the ‘act of rebounding’. We can understand resilience as being how we respond to and bounce back from the challenges and adversity in life – whether in the workplace, or personally

And why is resilience so important?

Every single one of us will experience some adversity, challenge and failure in our lives, whether personally or professionally. Sometimes, this will be infrequent. At other times, we may experience multiple challenges at once, when we’ll need more resilience to help us cope and recover.

Equipping ourselves to face these demands benefits our overall health and wellbeing in the long run. We can’t wish away most of life’s curveballs, so the best strategy to maintain wellbeing is to develop psychological and physical resources to withstand the storms.

Building Resilience: Nature vs Nurture

While everyone has a baseline level of inherent resilience, research shows that resilience can be cultivated and strengthened. This growth happens in two primary ways:

• Lived Experiences: facing setbacks and (eventually) overcoming them helps us learn what works – and what doesn’t – so we’re better prepared for future challenges.
• Resilience Training: training accelerates this learning process by equipping individuals with evidence-based strategies to make resilience a conscious, actionable skill.

What Can Organisations Do to Build Resilience?

Supporting resilience isn’t just about individual effort – it’s also about the environment organisations create for their people. Resilience training is part of a wider picture, which holistically equips employees with the tools they need to navigate adversity and thrive at work.
Crucially, resilience training should help employees by:

• Builiding confidence in their ability to manage stress and setbacks
• Developing practical strategies for “bouncing back” from challenges
• Protecting their mental health and wellbeing during periods of high pressure or change

But resilience doesn’t happen in isolation. To drive real behavioural change, organisations must take a comprehensive approach by:

• Delivering evidence-based training: For example, interactive workshops facilitated by psychologists can empower employees with practical tools for managing their resilience, energy, and stress.
• Providing data-driven insights: Personalised reports can give employees a personalised understanding of their strengths and areas for improvement. This ensures training is tailored to their needs and helps track measurable progress.
• Embedding a culture of wellbeing: Resilience training is most effective when combined with a supportive workplace culture. Leaders play a key role here, modelling resilience behaviours and fostering open conversations about wellbeing.

See more about resilience in our blog, The Business Case for Building Resilience.

Ready to Empower Your Workforce with Resilience Skills?

At Robertson Cooper, we understand that personal resilience is just one part of the equation. By combining employee-focused training with organisation-wide strategies, you can build a resilient, engaged, and productive workforce.

Contact us today to learn more about our Personal Resilience training and how it fits into our MyWellbeing programme, designed to create good days at work for everyone.