It is no surprise that effective employee training strategies are implemented to enhance productivity and promote increased efficiency within an organization. To make those programs actionable beyond the screen or classroom though, it is paramount that training programs be designed from the ground floor up to address the reality that reorganizations and industry disruption is commonplace across industries.
The rise of AI is driving workplace transformation at a scale we’ve never experienced before. To keep pace, organizations need integrated content and modules that strengthen resilience, helping employees not just adapt but seize new opportunities and thrive amid change.
All Effective Training Has a Common Denominator
Whether focused on onboarding, soft skills development, management and leadership training, upskilling, cross training, workplace sensitivity training or myriad other initiatives, an emphasis on resilience needs to be at the forefront of all development plans.
Boosting employee productivity, ensuring workplace safety and security, driving innovation, improving morale or focusing on employee retention needs one integrated thread that is repeated throughout every module: resilience.
We all have the capacity to build resilience, and we can learn to adapt, to recover from setbacks and grow stronger from our experience. While this is an individual capability, it’s also one that teams and leaders can learn when disruption occurs and flexibility and adaptation become ever more important.
When FUD Gets in the Way
During times of change — the very reason training often exists — fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) can cloud the ability to embrace adaptation. This is where the idea of “possibility” in training programs becomes vital. Disruption doesn’t just create challenges; it sparks innovation. At their best, employee training programs remind people that change and disruption are part of the natural evolution of progress, and that embracing them can unlock new business capabilities, new relationships, new skills and a growth-oriented mindset.
The ReBAR Framework
Let’s start with the ReBAR resilience framework and from there identify the benefits of incorporating resilience into employee training. The ReBAR framework — reflect, build, act, renew — provides four phases to deal with change and become more resilient.
In reflection, we start with gratitude, which helps us build a positive mindset, allowing us to take risks with innovative ideas. Build is about developing a supportive environment (peers, mentors, employee groups) to navigate changes with positivity and optimism. Action is about focus and alignment toward a unified goal, and renewal is about continual growth, which is really about building a growth mindset.
3 Benefits of Incorporating Resilience Into Employee Training
When resilience content is built-in to all facets of training, the benefits can be far-reaching. When leaders and teams practice and review ReBAR, growth becomes inevitable. There are three key benefits to incorporating resilience into employee training:
1. Build confidence.
When we rally around a new vision, company direction, get offered leadership training or learn about the importance of workplace sensitivity practices and the effect it can have on job satisfaction, often we find that to succeed in what we are learning, we need to be laser focused. Aim to set a single goal or objective and then build follow-on modules for secondary and tertiary goals.
Focus translates to greater success. If we have too many priorities, we do not have any. When we succeed, we should celebrate our wins. When we do that, we gain confidence. Celebrate success and reflect on what enabled us to achieve those goals. What traits and characteristics do we embody that enable us to find that success? That builds confidence.
2. Learn to bounce back faster.
A growth mindset is about learning from failures and setbacks. When change happens in business, usually it is because a new direction is required to make greater market impact. When we have our mentors and peer groups that provide us with a critical support system in the workplace, we recover from setbacks more quickly. When we double down on what we can control — attitude, effort and planning — and give up on what we cannot control, results follow more quickly.
3. Gain emotional intelligence.
Listen more. Be humble. Realize you do not have all the answers. A team is always stronger than an individual. Remember to count to five (or 10) before you react to something you disagree with in a meeting. Be empathetic. Consider the feelings of others during change. That builds trust. And sometimes we need to find the courage to share our own vulnerabilities in times of crisis. That spawns a growth mindset in others on the team, and good leadership is about empowerment and delegation.
Moving Forward
Employee training and development is mission critical to organizations as they bring on new employees from day one. Reminding ourselves of the pace of change we live in today, and the importance that human beings will have in shaping our dynamic future, requires more, not less training. The more we can practice reflection, build strong support systems and practice how we build a resilience mindset, the stronger our leaders of tomorrow will be.
