Resilient and Adaptable Employees Drive 4x More Innovation and Engagement!

💡 Employees should embrace the development of new skills, adopt fresh norms, and rethink long-standing mindsets and behaviors. Leaders must also be willing to do the same.

☝️ Achieving resilience and adaptability at both individual and organizational levels is no easy feat.

🚀Individuals who exhibit high levels of resilience or adaptability tend to enjoy better overall health and higher engagement compared to their peers.

💪 Just like elite athletes, leaders and organizations need to be both resilient and adaptable to achieve growth, innovation, and organizational health.

➡️ Other research show that resilience is a complex trait that showcases a business’s capacity to anticipate, tackle, and capitalize on unexpected disruptions, ensuring their survival, growth, and prosperity. The agility and innovative mindset of such firms enable them to build resilience and effectively navigate external challenges.

To be resilient and adaptable, leaders and employees need a mix of skills, according to a new interesting research published by McKinsey & Company using data 📊 from a cross-sectional survey of 30 countries.

✅Both resilience and adaptability increase innovation

Researchers discovered that employees who score high on both dimensions are over three times more likely than peers to report high engagement at work and almost four times more likely than peers to report an increase in innovative behaviors.

🚩 Only 16% of global employers currently invest in adaptability and continuous-learning programs.

Yet according to that same research, 26% of 10,000 employees across the globe consider adaptability a top skill need for them; this was especially true for front-line and low-tenure workers.

✅Unlock High Engagement and Innovation with Organizational Support and Psychological Safety

Researchers found that when employees experience strong organizational support - clear processes, ample resources, and supervisor or coworker support, for instance - along with psychological safety, resiliency, and adaptability, their likelihood of reporting high engagement or innovative behavior is six times higher than peers.

📍 Finally, researchers advise leaders to take the following actions:

✔️ Set a compass or North Star to help people move in a common direction.

Senior leaders can help foster resilience and adaptability at scale by pointing everyone toward a common North Star—for instance, some shared objectives and a few core principles or values (purpose, integrity, authenticity) that employees can cling to in the middle of a maelstrom.

✔️ Build a psychologically safe community, not just a workforce.

To be resilient and adaptable at scale, leaders need to emphasize this sense of community and turn a bunch of isolated company residents into a functional, flexible, and friendly neighborhood.

✔️ Ensure that they, themselves, are demonstrating resilience and adaptability and serving as role models for others.

✔️ Encourage employees to learn and build these skills in groups.

☝️ 𝙈𝙮 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬:

This insightful research uncovers fascinating patterns regarding how the presence or absence of resilience and adaptability can impact leaders, individuals, organizations, and overall business performance. While this topic is not new and has been explored by researchers in the past, the concept of organizational resilience has gained significant traction in today’s complex business environments. Despite the growing body of research, there is still limited empirical evidence on effective implementation strategies. What is evident, however, is that many individuals feel unprepared to handle uncertainty. As we approach 2025, it is more crucial than ever for both leaders and managers to develop these essential skills.

Thank you 🙏 McKinsey Health Institute researchers team for these insightful findings:

Jacqui Brassey, PhD, MA, MAfN 🎗️ (née Schouten) Aaron De Smet Dana Maor Sheida Rabipour, PhD

Dave Ulrich

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