Derek Mowbray's Guide to Corporate Resilience

This is a guide for leaders and managers of organisations. This guide is intended to help all forms of organisation to be more resilient. This means any organisation with 2 or more people working together towards a common goal - a team, unit, department, or whole organisation.

Resilient and healthy organisations have the capacity to respond quickly and effectively to internal and external pressures for change, and have a greater prospect of continuing success.

As organisations are formed of people working together for a common purpose, corporate resilience is, effectively, the accumulated resilience of individuals who make up the workforce.

However, the resilience of individuals is heavily influenced by the cultural context in which they work, together with the behaviours of leaders and managers who control the organisation, combined with the ease with which routine activities of daily working lives are carried out. If the working environment is positive, encouraging and provokes psychological wellbeing, the impact of this will pre-dispose most employees to have stronger attitudes towards challenging and adverse events.If the workforce has strong attitudes towards challenging and adverse events, then the organisation as a whole will exhibit the characteristics of being flexible, adaptable and robust in the face of challenging pressures for change. Corporate resilience focuses on creating the environment that pre-disposes the workforce to be resilient, so that the workforce as a whole makes the organisation resilient.

The development of corporate resilience is based on generating commitment, trust and engagement between the workforce and those who lead and manage the organisation. The framework for achieving this is The Wellbeing and Performance Strategic Framework that links the psychological wellbeing of individuals to high level performance by providing a positive cultural environment, adaptive leadership approaches, lifestyle@work strategies and personal resilience development.

This guide provides advice and exercises in the creation and maintenance of a positive work culture and leadership behaviours.