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  • April 24, 2019
  • Article
  • Harvard Business Review Digital Articles

Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience?

By: Allison L. Williams, Acacia C. Parks and Ashley Whillans
  • Format:Electronic
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Abstract

You have had a tough day at work. Your presentation did not go well; your boss harshly critiqued your performance; a colleague was promoted to a position you had hoped to fill; and, on top of it all, some of your coworkers planned to go out after work and you were not invited. Anyone would feel lousy at the end of this day. But what helps you learn from these experiences and get back to business tomorrow is resilience. Resilience, the ability to adapt and recover from personal and professional setbacks, is increasingly recognized as a key driver of job performance. For those who lack resilience, a bad day can seriously throw them off their game, lowering their sense of worth, attitude toward their job, and work performance. In our recent research, we looked at whether using a brief, online intervention could build resilience in employees. We found that distressed employees who used such an intervention a few times per week showed significantly greater increases in resilience than employees who did not.

Keywords

Resilience; Employees; Performance; Attitudes; Online Technology

Citation

Williams, Allison L., Acacia C. Parks, and Ashley Whillans. "Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience?" Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (April 24, 2019).
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About The Author

Ashley V. Whillans

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • The Developmental Origins and Behavioral Consequences of Attributions for Inequality By: Antonya Marie Gonzalez, Lucia Macchia and Ashley V. Whillans
  • Policy Stringency and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis of Data from 15 Countries By: Lara B. Aknin, Bernardo Andretti, Rafael Goldszmidt, John F. Helliwell, Anna Petherick, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daisy Fancourt, Elkhonon Goldberg, Sarah P. Jones, Ozge Karadag, Elie Karam, Richard Layard, Shekhar Saxena, Emily Thornton, Ashley Whillans and Jamil Zaki
  • Innovation at Moog Inc. By: Brian J. Hall, Ashley V. Whillans, Davis Heniford, Dominika Randle and Caroline Witten
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