Resisting “resilience”

The TUC warns against a “resilience” approach, where employers try to make workers more able to withstand stress rather than attacking the root of the problem and seeking to tackle the causes of work-related stress.

UNISON advises its branches to be wary of any programme for supporting mental health that seeks to incorporate resilience training for staff: “These programmes can often be used to shift the focus away from what the organisation should be doing to manage health and safety in the workplace, towards finding reasons to blame employees when something goes wrong.”

The union is clear that this approach is not good health and safety management: “Employers might rightfully help workers to develop coping mechanisms, strategies, or resilience in some particularly stressful workplaces, such as those facing social workers or nurses. However, it is not appropriate to use such training simply as a means to try to make staff cope with the stress and ill-health symptoms caused by ever increasing amounts of work. Rather ‘resilience’ should be built into workplace processes so that they do not generate prolonged excessive pressures on staff.”

Detailed guidance on resilience and wellbeing can be found on the UNISON website.