Pressure has become an integral part of today’s working experience. Between tight deadlines, packed agendas, and new models of work, employees are expected to deliver better results year on year with the same or even fewer resources. Add in the global volatility and economic strain, and it’s no surprise that many people find themselves struggling to keep up without compromising health or performance.

As shown in ‘The Burnout Report’ by Mental Health UK, an overwhelming 91% of UK adults admit they experienced high or extreme levels of pressure in the last year. It’s evident then that organisations need to better understand how pressure is affecting their teams and take a more proactive approach to resilience.

Understanding Workplace Pressure

To create conditions that allow employees to manage their pressure in ways that work for them, and to speak up when demands exceed their ability to cope, leaders must role model behaviours that support, rather than undermine, employee sustainability. They also need to create the environments that encourage employees to effectively manage their limited personal energy resources and, in so doing, build their resilience.

But resilience isn’t just about ‘coping’, it’s about sustaining the internal resources and perspective we need to respond well. For this to happen, both individuals and their managers need to understand exactly how the team is experiencing pressure. While no two experiences are the same, shared themes can help organisations understand both strengths and areas that may need improvement.

Resilience Assessment

A measurable view of resilience and how it’s felt across the organisation can be generated by using tools such as the ‘POWER-UP’ framework. By completing the tool, individual members of the team learn more about their own energy and pressure profile, as well as other areas known to impact overall wellbeing and performance. Their anonymous responses are then combined into a team profile that not only illuminates key sources of pressure but gives the people responding to it the information they need to open a dialogue about how to mitigate negative effects, whilst looking at ways to possibly moderate them at source. 

This assessment is centred around seven core elements:

• Pressure – The demands people are facing and how they show up in day-to-day work.
• Outlook – The mindset, mood, and lens through which we see our world.
• Wellbeing – Combination of physical, mental, emotional, and social health.
• Energy – How employees manage, maintain, and replenish their energy throughout the day.
• Recovery – Ability to pause, switch focus, and recharge effectively.
• Understanding – How individuals interpret events and make sense of what’s happening around them.
• Psychological Safety – Whether people feel safe enough to speak up, ask questions, and be themselves.

Viewed together, it becomes much easier to identify what supports positive wellbeing and performance and what gets in the way. Simple data mapping in these areas enables leaders to act on facts and not anecdotes, gain a clear picture of their own as well as their team’s resilience, and identify quickly what is working well and what could be addressed to get a better wellbeing and performance outcome. 

When used by multiple workgroups or functions, such assessments provide a broader view of the systemic factors that boost or undermine team wellbeing and productivity, enabling sharper targeting of wellbeing spend, and more accurate signposting to the resources available. While it can be a one-time evaluation, it’s most effective when leveraged by individuals and teams as a tangible starting point from which they can track progress over time and spot emerging issues that may need attention.

Maximising Performance

The critical thing to know about personal and organisational resilience is that, over time, it increases performance capacity. We recruit and train for job competencies, but all the skills in the world are of no use if you’re too exhausted or fearful to bring what you have to the table or feel compelled to hold back a large portion of your knowledge. If people are encouraged to explore the possibility that there may be alternative ways to ‘use’ their personal energy resources in the workplace, then an increase in performance capacity can naturally follow.

Gaining insight into the team’s resilience levels is therefore crucial for businesses of all sizes to build stronger and higher-performing teams, thereby helping secure a clear competitive advantage.

Lesley Cooper is a management consultant with nearly three decades of experience and founder of WorkingWell, an award-winning specialist consultancy that assists organisations in managing workplace pressure to facilitate growth and development. She is also co-author of Brave New Leader: How to Transform Workplace Pressure into Sustainable Performance and Growth.