Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience?

Allison L. Williams; Acacia C. Parks; A.V.  Whillans

Article | Harvard Business Review (website)

Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience?

by Allison L. Williams, Acacia C. Parks and A.V. Whillans

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;

Format: Electronic

Citation:

Williams, Allison L., Acacia C. Parks, and A.V. Whillans. "Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience?" Harvard Business Review (website) (April 24, 2019).

When it comes to our to-do lists, many of us prioritize checking off tasks that are easiest to complete or are due first, regardless of importance – a phenomenon that scholars describe as the “mere urgency” effect. This tendency becomes stronger the busier we are. But constantly prioritizing urgent tasks means that important tasks that have no urgent deadline (such as updating your resume or doing creative work) get pushed aside for later and later. Some just never get done. When we fail to do what’s important, often what matters most to us, we feel stressed, overwhelmed, and unmotivated— and firms are less productive. Research suggests managers can help employees combat the tendency to put off for tomorrow what isn’t due today: have employees set aside proactive time for work that is important but not urgent.

Over the last two decades, global wealth has risen. Yet, material affluence has not translated into time affluence. Instead, most people today report feeling persistently “time poor”—like they have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. This is critical because time poverty is linked to lower well-being, physical health, and productivity. For example, in our analysis of 2.5 million Americans, subjective feelings of time poverty had a stronger negative effect on well-being than being unemployed. However, individuals, organisations, and policymakers often overlook the pernicious effects of time poverty. Billions of dollars are spent each year to alleviate material poverty, while time poverty is often ignored or exacerbated. In this Perspective, we discuss the organisational, institutional, and psychological factors that explain why time poverty is often under appreciated. We argue that scientists, policymakers, and organisational leaders need to devote more attention and resources toward understanding and reducing time poverty to promote psychological and economic well-being.

Conventional wisdom says you should ask your colleagues for feedback. However, research suggests that feedback often has no (or even a negative) impact on our performance. This is because the feedback we receive is often too vague—it fails to highlight what we can improve on or how to improve. New research suggests a better approach. Across four experiments—including a field experiment conducted in an executive education classroom—researchers found that people received more effective input when they asked for advice rather than feedback.

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Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience?

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