In just four years, it feels like our workplaces have changed irrevocably. New technologies like AI threaten old jobs; shifting demographics bring new interpersonal challenges on teams; and our work location — be it home, the traditional office or a hybrid of the two — has become a flashpoint between leaders and employees. So what's the antidote? Professor Julie McCarthy joined the podcast to talk about resilience, why organizations should work to instill it in their teams, and how it can help us all move beyond burnout.
In just four years, it feels like our workplaces have changed irrevocably. New technologies like AI threaten old jobs; shifting demographics bring new interpersonal challenges on teams; and our work location — be it home, the traditional office or a hybrid of the two — has become a flashpoint between leaders and employees. So what's the antidote? Professor Julie McCarthy joined the podcast to talk about resilience, why organizations should work to instill it in their teams, and how it can help us all move beyond burnout.
Show notes:
[0:00] The world has been a very stressful place, and some people are talking about burnout as the new baseline.
[1:02] Meet Julie McCarthy, a professor of organizational behaviour and HR at the Rotman School of Management. She studies workplace stress.
[1:20] Her antidote for a stressful life? Resilience.
[1:44] How do you define stress, stress reactions and anxiety?
[3:13] While a little bit of anxiety can be useful…
[3:36] …too much is detrimental to your well-being.
[4:23] What is resilience?
[4:48] What chips away at your resilience?
[6:10] How do you build resilience?
[8:27] What does this look like, organizationally?
[9:14] What does anxiety cost organizations?
[10:30] Why a one-size-fits-all approach to resilience is destined to fail.
[10:55] Step 1: recognize there’s a problem and commit to dealing with it strategically.
[11:22] Step 2: Don’t waste your money fixing the wrong problem.
[12:04] Step 3: evaluate, re-evaluate, and then evaluate again.
[12:53] Be prepared: this is a big cultural shift for lots of organizations.
[13:31] Questions to ask yourself to kick things off.
[14:46] Look deeper: do you need to change procedures, the people you hire, or the types of training you offer?
[15:42] It is a time and financial investment.
[17:18] “But if it's done properly, it's not a matter of, will it work, but it's just a matter of when.”
Megan Haynes: The 2020s didn't exactly start off smoothly. In four years, we've suffered a global health crisis, two wars, and seen a rise in political unrest. Countries around the world are struggling with the cost of housing, and many are still reeling from the effects of inflation. And our workplace has, for many, changed irrevocably. New technologies like AI threaten old jobs; shifting demographics bring new interpersonal challenges on teams; and our work location - be it home, the traditional office or a hybrid of the two - has become a flashpoint between leaders and employees.
Julie McCarthy: (16:26) I think that post pandemic, The workplace has changed in some ways for the good, but in other ways, there is so much economic uncertainty, there's political unrest. The pressures are increasing on leaders, employees and organizations. So what we're seeing is ever increasing amounts of anxiety and stress,
In fact there's some conversations now around how burnout is the new baseline, which is really concerning.
MH: That’s Julie McCarthy, a professor of organizational behaviour and HR at the Rotman School of Management and the University of Toronto Scarborough. She studies anxiety and stress in the workplace, and how organizations can and should help their employees cope.
And amid a growing burnout epidemic, she has an antidote: resilience.
But what is resilience, and how should organizations help instill the skill in their teams? Welcome to the Executive Summary – I’m Megan Haynes, editor of the Rotman Insights Hub.
Musical interlude
MH: Let’s start out with a few simple definitions. First up: Stress: which is a process by which stressors – things like toxic coworkers, environmental changes or economic uncertainty – cause within us a stress reaction.
JM: And the stress reaction is a response that can be behavioral, psychological or physiological. And when we experience stress, it activates our fight or flight response,
And you can imagine years ago, you could be walking through a forest and there could be a tiger in the bushes. And you need to figure out, what am I going to do? And so you might decide to fight that tiger. You engage in the flight response, where you turn around and run away and try to get away. Or you engage in the freeze response, where you lie down, play dead, and hopefully that threat goes away. In today's environments, the same response happens when we face a threat in our environment. So maybe it is, you know, a co-worker or a client that is really upset, and you have to figure out, what are you going to do? Are you going to react and try to engage and fight back? Or are you going to quiet down and try to kind of get away from that environment or that situation?
MH: Anxiety is a stress reaction.
JM: It's a state characterized by feelings of worry and apprehension over current events that are happening or over future events that may occur in your environment.
MH: Think of it this way: Stress is the external pressure, anxiety is what you’re feeling and the stress reaction is how your body or brain responds.
And anxiety can cause lots of stress responses – some of which can actually be positive in the workplace.
JM: It can heighten vigilance, and it can encourage greater effort and allocation to tasks. Smaller levels of anxiety in the right situations, in the right places, can actually motivate us, particularly if it's in a task that's something that we are an expert in.
MH: But, too much anxiety isn’t ideal for performance.
JM: It can make it really difficult to focus on what's happening in the moment. We call this cognitive interference.
The other thing that happens with anxiety is emotional exhaustion, and so over time, if we're experiencing high levels of anxiety, we can experience emotional exhaustion where we're just completely depleted, and it's a component of burnout. And this emotional exhaustion can lead to a number of detrimental outcomes, including lower levels of performance - again, hard to engage in those tasks and perform at these high levels and give really high quality output if we're emotionally drained and exhausted. But it can also have serious detrimental effects to our well being and so to our physical and mental health.
MH: So, how can folks deal with stressors and anxiety? That’s where resilience comes in. Resilience is literally your ability to cope with this anxiety and stress.
JM: And resilient individuals feel the same stress. They experience anxiety, as we all do. But they're able to bounce back from that stress, and in many cases, they're able to bounce back even stronger than before.
MH: You can learn to be more resilient – we’ll get to that in a few moments – but first, let’s talk about what chips away at it, because while stress is an individual response, and anxiety is an individual’s feelings, what chips away at resilience – though still highly individual - is often heavily influenced by the environment.
Feeling like you’re being unfairly treated, for example, can erode your resilience; unresolved conflicts, with senior managers or co-workers, is enormously depleting on your energy. When you don’t feel supported, or feel in a constant state of worry over things like job security or upcoming unknown changes, your resilience can crumble. And many these issues come down to leaders not meeting our innate needs, which Julie says include connection with other people, autonomy over our lives and opportunities for growth.
JM: So if you feel that within the organization, you don't have autonomy, and it's very authoritative, and you're under all of these rules and regulations. You can't make decisions. You don't have choices that will chip away at it. If you feel that your affiliation need is not being met, where you don't have these support systems in place, you don't have coworkers and leaders that are really listening to you, that are supporting you, that's detrimental. And then the growth if you feel like you're not growing. If you feel that you're stuck at this level, you're not learning anymore, you're not being recognized for this work that you're doing as you're working so hard again, that's another factor that really is problematic.
MH: So how exactly do you build your resilience?
JM: At the core of resilience is this idea that every day we have to rejuvenate the energy that we have.
MH: Julie looks at resilience building in four quadrants: physical, mental, emotional and values. First, physical is literally, are you physically healthy, are you getting enough sleep, are you exercising. Can you physically recover from the previous day’s activity?
JM: In addition to eating well and exercising, are you taking the time to psychologically detach from the stressors of the day? And so we call this psychological detachment.
MH: Her second bucket is emotion.
JM: There's a great deal of research that shows that resilient individuals have a more positive outlook and a more optimistic outlook. And it doesn't mean that they're not experiencing negative emotions, because negative emotions are very important and they're things we should pay attention to, but it means that they have the capacity to really harness those positive emotions. Because positive emotions are contagious. And they help us look and reframe our world with a more positive and hopeful outlook that actually is associated with resilience.
MH: Third you have the mental bucket, and here Julie really focuses on, well, focusing.
JM: Resilient individuals are more likely to be mindful and focused. We talk to leaders all the time that say that “I am so busy that I'm in a state of continuous partial attention, where I have a million things on my mind, and I'm not really thinking about one thing, I'm thinking about 10 things.” So it's this constant state of distraction, and that's enormously depleting.
MH: Finally there’s the concept of values.
JM: When we study resilient individuals, we know that they have strong values, and their values help anchor them during times of stress.
If I'm living a life that's in alignment with my values, it becomes easier to kind of take on the things that I'm taking on in the day. And so the way that they are leading aligns with those core values. The way that they are doing things in their personal life aligns with those core values. They are consistent, they are strong, they are rigorous, and they are anchored.
MH: So what does this look like in an organization?
Well, for one – a resilient workforce is one that feels like their needs are being met – they have autonomy, they have opportunity for growth, they have connections.
They don’t feel like there is unresolved conflict. They feel fairly treated. They have permission to disconnect at the end of the day. Their values align with that of their organization. They feel their wellbeing matters.
Essentially, they feel like they work in a positive environment. And companies should be prepared to invest in creating this type of culture, because an overly anxious, un-resilient workforce is going to cost them.
Musical interlude
JM: I think organizations have an enormous responsibility to create a culture that fosters high levels of resilience. And it's not just that it's the right thing to do, it's the ethical thing to do, it has a direct impact on the bottom line.
MH: Regular listeners of this podcast know that employees who are emotionally exhausted or don’t feel cared for don’t end up bringing their best selves to work.
JM: We see these employees who are not fully engaged. They're doing kind of the minimum, because anxiety causes emotional exhaustion and it can cause cognitive interference. When employees are asked to do work that is cognitively demanding and that requires creativity and high levels of output, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to produce this really high quality work
MH: High levels of anxiety also erodes trust in an organization, dampens morale and decreases employee satisfaction – often resulting in higher turnover, not to mention increased absenteeism. So the cost of a stressed out, anxious workforce is very real … even if companies don’t have a line-item tracking it on their annual reports.
JM: One figure that's often cited is that in North America alone, over $320 billion is spent annually on stress and stress related illness,
MH: Leaders listening might be thinking to themselves “I know it’s a problem!
We’re putting money into wellness programs! We bring in counsellors. We host webinars. Yoga lunches! They aren’t working...” to which Julie says…
JM: I think the problem is that many organizations try to adopt a one size fits all approach.
MH: One webinar, one mental health app, one pizza party to boost morale does not a resilient workforce make.
JM: The first thing is recognizing that there's a problem, finding the time to actually address the problem, and then hiring the right people and having the expertise to begin to deal with the problem strategically, instead of throwing these Band-Aid solutions at it because those are quick and easy.
MH: So you need to know what the problem is and create a robust solution to address that problem – and this is often the first misstep Julie sees organizations make.
JM: It's important to start with what we would call, in academia, a needs assessment.
We collect rigorous, valid data, anonymous data from staff and leaders. What is the problem. If it's a workload problem, then let's start there. Let's not throw a pizza party because if we do try to throw solutions that are not aligned with the needs, we're going to create a workforce that feels less heard, less engaged, and will make the problem, in fact, even worse.
MH: And that’s just the start.
JM: Now, once those programs are developed properly, a lot of companies will stop there. They'll implement them, and they'll be like, “okay, good. We did it.” We need to assess and evaluate, and we need to say, Okay, did this program actually, in fact, work?
Is there actually a behavioral change? It might be that they learn from that program and they walk away saying, “Okay, that was great. I learned all these new strategies. But you know what? There's impediments to me actually doing this within the organization. So I learned that with my team members, I could modify the way that our Zoom meetings are done in these five ways. But I actually can't do that within this organization because the way that we're structured or set up doesn't allow it.” We still have a problem,
After the behavioral changes, do we get results? We might have changed that behavior, but did it actually make things better?
It's a cyclical, never ending process where we’re constantly assessing and evaluating where are we at, where do we need to change, where can we be better.
MH: And it’s important to remember that building a culture that encourages resilience is – often - a big cultural change for an organization. And your company might fall anywhere on the “We’re great at caring for our employees” to “We’re totally toxic and everyone hates us” spectrum, so the time and investment you need to put in is going to vary.
JM: Resilience is complex, and humans are complex, and when we're living in this complex world, we're looking for these quick solutions. But they, unfortunately, don't exist
Musical interlude
MH: Creating these big culture changes often starts with collecting the right data. If you don’t have the right information – if you don’t understand what your employees’ needs are and where you’re falling short – you won’t be developing the right programs or implementing the right changes. This will be very company and industry specific.
Measuring the resilience of a nursing staff, for example, is going to be very different from that of a group of software engineers.
But generally, Julie suggests companies begin by tracking a few important employee measures, including well-being and engagement, mental health and even resilience. And, you should look into absenteeism and presenteeism.
JM: How often are they there? But not actually there, right
MH: And of course, it’s important that organizations figure out if their employees’ innate needs are being met.
JM: Do they feel that they have the autonomy within their job to be able to make the decisions that they should be able to make. That they have control over the things they feel they should have control over. That they are able to develop these strong interpersonal connections with their coworkers, with their leaders that help support them during times of uncertainty, during stress. And that they feel that they have the potential for growth, to be able to actually grow within their roles, to progress within the organization.
MH: Organizations also need to look holistically – a true culture change isn’t just offering seminars.
It might mean changing procedures – say tweaking the conflict resolution process so folks feel a problem has actually been resolved, or even implementing policies that discourage after-work communication to allow employees to fully disconnect at the end of the day.
(14:13) It might mean changing the hiring practices to ensure that employees coming into the organization align value-wise.
(14:31) It also means providing training to employees of all levels.
JM: Organizations will train their leaders.
But an organization is made up of much more than just the leaders. Everybody within the organization plays an important role. And when we're talking about how do we think about strategies to reduce stress and build resilience, it needs to be something that's done at all levels.
Often when I work with very senior leaders, they say, “I wish I had have had this training 20 years ago. I wish that we did this earlier on.”
MH: And it’s important for organizations to recognize that one of the biggest challenges is just getting started.
JM: When I talk to organizations and leaders like that, where do I find the time? You know, I don't even have the time to finish the 5,000 emails in my inbox today, and you're telling me now I need to start to create this change.
MH: But culture change is a time and resources commitment – nothing happens on its own, and companies need to be prepared to make it work.
JM: I think that leaders and organizations should go in with a mindset that not can this be successful, but we know that this will be successful if we do it the right way.
It will take time. Culture is a multifaceted organizational entity and it’s something that’s enormously important. I would argue it's more important than ever before. With the advent of hybrid and remote work, we are seeing more and more employees disengaged from their work. We're seeing younger generations with culture shifts, who have unique and different mindsets in terms of what they're looking for within the workplace, what they would like their job role to look like,now more than ever, organizations really need to create these cultures where people are engaged, where it's a workplace where they really want to be part of and these culture shifts are essential to that. And so, it is a considerable investment of time and money.
MH: Ultimately, Julie wants leaders to remember that organizations are made up of people, and building a resilient workforce isn't just t a smart business decision; it's an investment in the well-being and long term success of employees and organizations alike.
JM: But if it's done properly, it's not a matter of, will it work, but it's just a matter of when.
Musical outro
MH: This has been Rotman Executive Summary, a podcast bringing you the latest insights and innovative thinking from Canada's leading business school.
Special thanks to professor Julie McCarthy.
Join us next month as we chat with assistant professor Nora Pankratz about the hidden ways climate change is costing organizations.
This episode was written and produced by Megan Haynes. It was recorded by Dan Mazzotta, and edited by Avery Moore Kloss. For more innovative thinking, head over to the Rotman Insights Hub, and subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple or Amazon. Thanks for tuning in.