Resilience in Crisis | Vani V. Rao | HR Director | Whirlpool of India Ltd

The rapid outbreak of coronavirus represents an alarming health crisis that the world is currently grappling with and which is adversely impacting lives, jobs, and businesses at a scale unheard of.

Organizations are adapting and innovating in new and unconventional ways to reshape and recreate the new work environment. One of the needs of the hour is to build resilience into the organization. Building resilience is one of the best ways to prepare for a crisis since resilient people and teams are more adaptive, flexible, and collaborative. The type of emergency you may face is often unpredictable. Even smaller crises, such as the sudden loss of leadership or business can erode staff resilience. If an emergency is prolonged, and we don’t make a deliberate effort to maintain our resilience, we risk becoming burned out and ineffective.

Positivity and preparedness are the main contrivances of action for leading an unprecedented situation. Hence, a main determinant of resilience is the ability to foster and amplify positive emotions and work out multi-pronged strategies to face it.

Resilience is a person’s emotional response to a situation, more than the physical and mental strength. Hence, when a crisis or setback arises, the person is prepared to take it in his stride. However, very few people have an inherent attribute of resilience. The good news is that it can be an acquired attribute as well. By promoting a culture of agility and learning from failures, we can enable the employees to become resilient individuals.

Resilient organizations are prepared for adversity and are simultaneously proactive and flexible when encountering crisis situationsFurthermore, building organizational resilience is important because it demonstrates the ability to sustain competitive advantage over time. This is achieved by simultaneously driving excellent performance and effective innovation. By doing this, organizations will also show the adaptability of their business goals to turbulent changes in the market.

Under the current pandemic situation, leading the function and driving my team to operate virtually for about a half year, I have had my learnings and would like to share them to build a resilient ecosystem during uncertain times. Put people and safety first to gain employee affiliation. Continue to build focus on vision with compassionate leadership. Encourage agility and disruption in the business to deal with adversity which paves waves to bring more innovation.Stick to the basics by having strong traditional organizational goals at the same time enhance ability to take calculated risks. Encourage radical thinking to develop the ability to think ahead of time.
Understanding resilience simply means – To be future ready! Diving deeper in the subject, here are a few recommendations to build a resilient organization for the future:

Business Model :In no time,organization should have the ability to create and adapt to agile business operating structures which can be skeletal at the same time have the capability to expand as and when required and cater to the business needs and absorb shock.

Risk Appetite: Organization should build a strong cultural base to encourage employees to take calculative risk.This opens a gateway for innovation and enhances self-efficacy for teams and employees.Leaders should build the trust in employees that it is “OK” to fail and encourage the idea to “Just Do it”.

Decentralized Decision Making: Decentralizing decision-making increases trust, reduces delays, improves business performance, and facilitates faster feedback and provides more innovative solutions. Higher levels of empowerment are an additional, tangible benefit. At the same time it strengthens the belief of inclusion by acknowledging expertise of others.

Organization Culture: Resilient cultures understand the benefits of shared responsibility and empowered teams. This can prepare employees for any crisis situation by establishing a clear understanding and a strong sense of accountability.

Summing up, why should an organization need to be resilient? Without a second thought: Response would be simply for their bare existence! Building a resilient organization takes time, but the rewards for any organization are extensive. A resilient organization invests in both physical and digital infrastructures in order to make them more adaptive, elastic, and flexible in the long-run.