Intentionally building resilience at Vietnam Best Workplaces

Resilience has been said and shared as a deciding factor in stories of national heros, jubliant victories over invading enemies or simply a win over in-born disadvantages.

Resilience now has become a much metioned term in business as a way out in the new normal.
Whether it is a personal trait or something that can be learned, recent articles on Harvard Business Review indicate that resilience-the ability to thrive under change—has risen to the top of many leaders’ agenda. It is now recognized as a driver of value and not a cost to the business or just merely risk mitigation. Analysis of the impact of resilience over a 25-year period shows that it delivers differentiated long-term performance value.

Despite its positive impact on the business, barely 12% of people have built up their resilience with intentional support from their organizations; most organizations seem to help employees build resilience almost by accident even though resilience at work has been recognized as strategic not an operational consideration.

So, how do we know if a business intentionally incorporates the building blocks of resilience and growth into their people strategy? Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology referred to these as PERMA: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

To find the answer, we analyzed the results of Trust Index© surveys from the 2022 Vietnam Best workplaces™ using the PERMA model. Unsurprisingly, we consistently saw intentional efforts to build resilience among these organizations, as they persisted with a People- First, Purpose-driven mindset, despite the twists and turns resulting from the Covid pandemic.

Compared with other Great Place to Work Certified™ companies that participated in the survey over the same period in 2021 to February 2022, an analysis of their Trust Index© results demonstrated their investment in intentionally building their employees’ resillience at work.

As a Chinese proverb says it “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, and despite the relatively lower scores compared with the VN Best, certified companies in Vietnam have started their journey toward a North Star of a resilient workforce, which is so motivating especilally when out there, as reported in a research by two British consultants 77% of respondents said they get their resilience from doing challenging work-learning from experience and succeeding in the tough times, whereas 75% of respondents constantly dealing with difficult personal and political relationships at all levels, with bosses and managers as well as with peers.