Business travel has slowed, schools are closing, and large corporations are asking employees to work from home in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. As companies prepare their readiness strategies, they would do well to start with how to manage the worry and panic their employees are facing, says Jan Bruce, CEO, meQuilibrium, the leading digital resilience solution.
“It is fundamental for organizations to take steps to address the resilience of their employees. Leaders and employees are feeling anxious and stressed,” says Bruce. “During times of uncertainty in the face of threat, our brains go on negative autopilot and we exaggerate the probabilities of bad outcomes. Coronavirus anxiety is an understandable response to the unknown.”
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Resilience and agility are crucial skills in times of threat. Resilience represents the ability to rebound productively in challenging situations and in today’s anxiety-ridden work environments, those who possess adaptive capabilities will be better equipped to handle the psychological toll. meQuilibrium’s scientific research has shown that highly resilient people are 28% more able to adapt to changing circumstances.
“The science is incontrovertible: resilience helps people work more effectively by managing their minds and emotions in high stress, adverse situations,” explains Andrew Shatté, PhD, chief science officer of meQuilibrium and a world-renowned resilience expert. “Organizations that prepare their people to quickly switch gears from threatened to productive, can navigate this challenging time effectively, instead of remaining in non-stop threat mode.”
The fundamental cognitive skills needed for employees to succeed in volatile circumstances and rebound from disruptions include stress management, emotion control, emotional intelligence, confidence, positivity, and the energy and purpose to persevere without burning out.
To help employees develop skills to deal with uncertainty and give HR leaders tools to become more resilient organizations, meQuilibrium is offering a free online package of resources, including an on-demand webinar “Uncertainty in a Time of Coronavirus” featuring meQuilibrium’s co-founders and resilience experts Jan Bruce, CEO, Adam Perlman, MD, MPH, FACP, Chief Medical Officer, and Andrew Shatte, PhD, Chief Science Officer. Dr. Perlman also serves as Director of Integrative Health and Wellbeing for Mayo Clinic Florida. Dr. Shatte is a world-renowned expert on resilience and a Brookings Institute Fellow. The webinar is designed to help people rebound productively in challenging situations like the Coronavirus epidemic.
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meQuilibrium suggest these five ways that organizations can optimize their workforce’s cognitive capabilities, stress and emotion management in tumultuous times:
- Understand current capacities and risks related to cognitive performance and stress management using assessments with high predictive ability.
- Triage those at-risk using intelligent routing to direct employees to resources for support when risk is identified.
- Provide training for cognitive upskilling, which can strengthen employees’ self-management, preventing stress-related problems down the line.
- Equip teams for success by teaching them to be calm and focused so they can remain positive and make reasonable decisions.
- Upskill managers to thrive during change. When managers know how to see the opportunity in change and respond with agility and resilience, they can support employees to do the same.
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