We shouldn't have to be resilient at work
The responsibility for addressing workplace issues lies with employers, not employees.
Back in 2016, Harvard Business Review published an article: 5 Ways to Boost Your Resilience at Work. The article was directed at employees, suggesting strategies like "exercise mindfulness" and "develop mental agility." Employees could overcome stress, the article touted, if they just worked harder on themselves. The author is the CEO of an organization called Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which was originally developed within Google.
Seven years later, HBR published another article: “Resilient” Isn't the Compliment You Think It Is. The author, Simran Jeet Singh, writes, "Resilience has become so ubiquitous that I actually wouldn't mind never hearing about it again." This article appropriately points out that company leaders should be accountable for what happens in their organizations, and not use "perceived individual resilience to deflect real, systemic problems."
Workplaces shouldn't require resilience, period. They should be designed to support an employee's well-being through inclusion, reasonable workloads, and non-toxic managers.
A few years ago, Zandashe L'Orelia Brown posted on Twitter:
I dream of never being called resilient again in my life.
I’m exhausted by strength. I want support. I want softness. I want ease. I want to be amongst kin. Not patted on the back for how well I take a hit. Or for how many.
Burnout, trauma, and depression take a toll
Even if people escape a workplace that requires resilience to survive, the experience can follow them to their next role.
It strikes me that people are collectively traumatized by layoffs, burned out from overwork, and depressed by the general state of things. A friend described feeling anxious when his manager tossed a meeting on his calendar with no context. It turned out to be something innocuous, but he spent hours thinking he was going to be laid off—a relic of past workplace trauma.
I previously cited the stat I heard on NPR that 40% of adults in the U.S. will experience a layoff at some point in their careers. I've been thinking about this nonstop because even though layoffs are common, they still shock people. In April 2024, a Gallup poll found that only 13% of people consider a layoff "Very Likely" or "Fairly Likely" within the next 12 months. Most people believe a layoff could never happen to them... and then it does.
I spoke with a woman recently (interview forthcoming!) who talked about depression following a layoff. She didn't recognize it at first until she was at a conference and people asked how she was doing. She said, "As I heard myself answering, I realized, ‘Oh, honey, you're not ok.’”
These pervasive feelings aren't limited to layoffs. An article in McKinsey states, "As burnout takes its toll and people leave, work often shifts to those who remain, driving even more burnout."
I didn't realize how burned out I was after quitting my job in 2021, but I spent months thinking, "Something isn't right." I felt "off" — like I couldn't perform at work the way I was used to performing. It wasn't until about 8 months later that I realized I was burned out. I was also so used to an incredibly toxic work environment that I was suspicious, all the time. I felt like I could never let my guard down.
Ongoing fear and stress have created a culture of anxiety — and it undermines any chance of being productive and enjoying work.
There's little reward for doing the right thing
I realized recently that I talk very negatively about work in front of my kids. I don't know how else to frame it, because that's been my experience, as well as my husband's. "Never trust an employer. Always look out for yourself. Work is just someplace you go and something you do, nothing more" It's so different from the message I received growing up, which was that if you worked hard, you'd be rewarded.
When asked if she enjoys her work, a woman I know replied, "I'm able to enjoy work, but I think my brain has adopted this ability or I'd probably die from the weight of how work is handled and workers are treated in the U.S. I guess it's mostly a means to an end."
In an article for The New Yorker, Cal Newport wrote:
Something’s still wrong, above and beyond the usual challenges of office life. Everyone’s tired. What started with the Great Resignation has become the Great Exhaustion.
So how can we fix this exhaustion? It's not the responsibility of the employees, as the 2016 HBR article suggests. Rather, it takes some real introspection on the part of employers to recognize that something is wrong — and want to fix it.
In 2022, Swedish retailer IKEA was losing about one-third of its workforce per year, for various reasons. IKEA decided to solve its turnover problems with a few solutions: increasing pay, making work more flexible for frontline employees, and subsidizing childcare.
In results that are shocking to no one, these tactics worked. Within a year, voluntary turnover dropped from one-third to one-fourth of employees in the U.S.
But if companies can't voluntarily decide to treat employees humanely, laws can also help — something the U.S. fails at miserably. Both Norway and Canada and many other countries have laws around layoffs and severance. Companies can't just kick employees out the door to fend for themselves.
Canada even requires two weeks' notice of employment termination, or pay in lieu of notice. Which makes a whole ton of sense, since it is customary for employees to provide two weeks' notice in the U.S., but employers aren't required to do the same (which comes with risk to the employee — a risk that would be mitigated if the notice happened in reverse as well). At a minimum, it could mitigate some of the fear and trauma that's permeated the workforce due to pervasive layoffs.
The McKinsey article I referenced earlier also wrote:
It is time for employers to be bold by, for instance, rewarding and promoting leaders who drive visible performance results and also build capabilities, enhance organizational health, create psychological safety, and help reenergize the organization.
Sadly, we're far from reaching a point of psychological safety. I spoke with an employee recently — one who had survived two layoffs at his company within the past year, and he said, "Chaos is rewarded. The managers always putting out fires are the ones who are kept, because they're seen as more 'resilient' — they can deal with crap. But the ones who are so good at what they do that their departments run smoothly... they're the ones who are let go.
There's a disconnect in not recognizing that bad managers are causing the chaos in the first place."
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It's wild to think that office work should require a version of survival skills.