It is no question that the Australian job market is experiencing very interesting times with almost full employment, with nearly everyone willing and able to work being in a position already. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics release, there are 480,100 job vacancies in Australia, a 111.1% increase since February 2020. In June, unemployment tumbled to 3.5% as Australia approaches what is considered full employment. With so many jobs being created, it indicates that current market demand for candidates is very strong, and supply of suitable candidates simply can’t keep up. One result from such a market is that companies are ultimately going to feel a “squeeze”.

So, in a market where supply of candidates is not where it needs to be, how can a company ensure that they retain and influence their current employee base, until market conditions become more balanced, to minimise the severity of the squeeze and consequential impacts such a squeeze could have on the company’s workforce? One potential solution is building and developing a resilient workplace. 

Resilience, in short, exists when a person can bounce back and thrive from major challenges (in the case of this article, we refer such major challenges to the abovementioned “squeeze”). So why is resilience important?

One’s resilience is often tested and pushed to its capacity when stress factors arise in everyday life, including at work, and it is safe to say if a company is experiencing a squeeze, stress levels will rise. It has been identified that stressful work environments (influenced by factors including long work hours, job strain, limited/lack of control, peer conflict) lead to negative physical and mental environments. Such “bad environments” have been identified by SEEK as the fourth strongest driver across Australians as the reason why they quit or moved on from their job.

As employers build and improve workplace resilience, they also seek ways to address and mitigate workplace stress. When addressed, employers build a resilient workforce, and employees handle work stress better by developing protective factors against stress. This leads to a range of benefits too:

• Strong resilience creates greater job satisfaction, work happiness, organisational commitment, and employee engagement.
• Raising resilience contributes to improved self-esteem, sense of control over life events, sense of purpose in life and improved employee interpersonal relationships. 
• Employers reap the rewards of increased productivity and decreasing turnover.

Given the many benefits, it is crucial employers are building resilience in their workforce so that employees develop skills to manage workplace stress. For an employer, this provides stronger confidence that employees can be influenced and retained and impacts of a “squeeze” can be reduced.

Creating a resilient workforce and a healthier culture takes commitment, but with that commitment it can be done. Here are some key factors to consider in building a more resilient workforce:

Understand Your Employees

Resilient employees make resilient organisations. People who are supported, motivated and equipped are best positioned to overcome obstacles and distractions.

Engage Leadership

A resilient workplace requires leadership buy-in. Employees are more likely to participate in resilience programs when the organisation’s leaders are involved.

Consider Resilience Training

Employers are increasingly turning their attention to resiliency training — with good reason. In a dynamic work environment, resiliency training elevates job performance and work engagement.

Create A Resilient Culture

Organisational culture has many layers. Ultimately, it is built on principles of empowerment, purpose, trust, and accountability. Building or improving a resilient culture is strengthened by a company-wide statement showing support for employees and a commitment to addressing resilience.

Look for Ways to Improve Your Work Environment

Whether your work environment has physical offices or virtual locations, being flexible when possible is important.

Where is a good starting point?

So, with the goal being building a more resilient workforce and culture, where is a good place to start to identify where you workforce is currently at and pinpointing the opportunities you might be facing? This is where Optimum Consulting have you covered.

Here at Optimum Consulting, we can point you well and truly in the right direction with our resilience assessments. What our assessments offer is the capability to find where employees resilience strengths and weaknesses currently lie and through our individual or group consultations, develop necessary action plans to target opportunities and make necessary and relevant change.

What this can also mean, as part of continually looking to strengthen your resilient workforce, when recruiting new employees to your team, Optimum’s resilience assessments can help identify upfront if they are adequately resilient and what initiatives you could run to ensure that they are, with guidance.

If you’re interested in hearing more about such assessments and how they can help your organisation, contact us here at Optimum Consulting.

IZAAC ELLINGS
Consultant

Izaac joined Optimum Consulting in 2022 as a Consultant for the Technical Services division. Izaac comes from a client focused background within the Banking and Financial services sector, where he has learnt the importance of maintaining strong relationships and placing clients’ interests at the core of all he does. Izaac brings a passion to servicing his clients with positive and productive solutions, whilst fostering great opportunities for candidates in what is an ever evolving and transforming employment market.