Organisational Resilience: A Company’s Immune System
The dictionary defines resilience as durability, the ability to withstand difficult (life) situations without lasting impairment. What’s essential for an individual in leading a positive life also applies to organisations. Companies need a certain degree of thick-skinnedness in the face of challenges and crisis in order to survive even in uncertain times. There’s good news: organisational resilience can be learned.
Crises: Appeals for Change
In times of upheaval, companies not only have to contend with financial challenges: crises have a strong impact on the level of personnel—and impair the performance of an organisation. In times of crisis, companies are particularly at risk of top performers leaving, employees falling into a downward spiral of demotivation, and the necessary change being obstructed by resistance, conflicts and long decision-making processes.
The Solution: Strengthening Organisational Resilience
Resilience is not a measure that can be implemented within a company. Rather, resilience is a bundle of resources that can be found in various areas of the business. Important cornerstones of resilience are:
- Focus on purpose, employee retention and commitment in stable phases
- Stable financial and human resources, i.e. employees and managers who are not already in a permanent state of overload during periods of stability
- A culture in which solution-orientation, learning and adaptation to new things play an essential role and in which mistakes are dealt with transparently and constructively
- Managers with high levels of personal resilience ‘in their DNA’
- Managers who advance the company’s strategy
- A team spirit that doesn’t collapse when individuals leave the team
- A high degree of autonomy and decision-making skills at employee level
How Resilient is Your Company Right Now?
We’d be happy to advise you on building resilience at all levels of your business. To do this, we start with an assessment of the current situation and identify risks, fields of action and measures to gradually strengthen the organisational resilience of your employees as individuals and of the organisation as a whole.