Focus on positives about return to workplace – for your own good

Before Covid stopped life in its tracks, business leaders thought Vuca (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) pretty much summed up the challenges they faced. Then Covid arrived. It accentuated these challenges and piled more on top. Resilience became the quality companies and individuals were encouraged to cultivate as the scale of the crisis became apparent and the demand for resilience training spiked.

At an individual level, resilience is linked to how we perceive and deal with the world. In a corporate context, it’s how organisations weather the shocks, setbacks and stresses that can stretch them to capacity.

Regardless of context, some would describe it as the process of cultivating old-fashioned grit and it is something that can be taught and built into a positive force over time.

That said, time is not on the side of those feeling apprehensive about the imminent return to the office. So, for a quicker survival "fix" for returnees navigating an altered workplace, organisational psychologist and holistic psychotherapist Margaret Forde recommends tapping into resilience's close relation – emotional agility.

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“In broad terms resilience is the bigger picture whereas emotional agility is more in the moment and something you can do on a daily basis to cope with what life throws at you,” she says.

“If you are anxious or feeling negative about going back to the office, I would recommend working on changing the narrative in your head around it. By this, I mean focusing on the advantages a return offers – such as having more clearly-defined work/life boundaries or calling to mind positive interactions with colleagues in the past.

Wellbeing programmes

At an organisational level companies could play their part by offering a wellbeing programme with a focus on transition and adaptability.

“When I talk about changing the narrative I don’t mean suppressing your feelings or trying to be unrealistically positive. We should accept that our negative feelings exist but try to pay more attention to what’s good and focus on developing a more optimistic outlook.

"I've been working in the field of mindfulness and wellbeing for over 30 years and, in my experience – and this is backed by a body of research – increasing the attention we give to positive emotional experiences downsizes the amount of attention we give to the negative ones. Prof Barbara Fredrickson, a world expert on positive emotion and its benefits for adaptability, thinking outside the box and social cohesion, calls this process 'increasing our positivity ratio'."

Forde adds that the best way to build resilience is by increasing the variety of our coping strategies.

“If we practice the habit of paying attention to the here and now, look at situations from different perspectives and focus on what is going right even in a problematic situation, then we are becoming more fluid and breaking out of our ingrained reaction patterns,” she says. “Also, immersive experiences, whether that’s by way of a hobby, sea swimming or getting stuck into solving a difficult problem at work, all take us ‘out of our heads’ and help build resilience.”

Online course

In February this year the Centre for Positive Psychology and Health at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) launched a free online course on health and happiness. The 10-week programme is open to all and explores how the principles of positive psychology and lifestyle medicine can be used to improve health and optimise wellbeing.

It covers a range of topics including whole-person health, strengths, mindfulness and meditation and obstacles and paths to happiness.

The centre expected between 300 and 400 people to sign up. In the event, more than 30,000 (mainly women) have participated so far. Because of the uptake, registration remains open and ongoing. (A new version of the programme aimed at 12-18 year olds will be launched later this month.)

“The course was designed to help people better understand the science behind their own health and happiness so that they know how to stay well, develop their resilience and learn to flourish,” says the centre’s director, Prof Ciaran O’Boyle. “The Covid crisis has accelerated the global focus on health and wellbeing and we already know that the virus will have far-reaching and long-lasting implications, not least on our resilience and mental health.”

The RCSI is best known for training doctors, but its remit is much broader and the Centre for Positive Psychology and Health was set up in 2019 in response to the increasing prevalence of lifestyle-associated diseases and growing evidence of the role that psychological factors play in optimising health and wellbeing. The centre is committed to outreach and in particular to educating the public about lifestyle-related disease and how to mitigate it.

It has also begun working closely with employers keen to champion healthier workforces and workplaces using solid scientific evidence to support change.

“The response to the science of health and happiness course has been phenomenal, with many people saying it ‘saved’ them during the Covid crisis and really helped them deal with working from home and the big life events that have happened to them since the pandemic began, such as bereavement,” O’Boyle says.

“I think people related well to the course because they were getting the science. They could be certain it was authoritative and that it had an evidence base. At the same time they are being given practical help in terms of things they can do themselves.”