Stress and Resilience in the Workplace

Resilience to the effects of stress is a variable that is often overlooked in studies of the effects of stress on behaviour and individuals. Indeed, our models of health provision (both physical and mental health) focus almost entirely on waiting until individuals develop issues and then seeking to treat these via pharmacotherapy and psychological interventions. This method of treating disease is costly and ineffective. Furthermore, science is beginning to unravel ways of living that evidence has shown can reduce the likelihood individuals will become sick in the future. After describing stress resilience, the present chapter presents the results of a literature review on evidence-based factors that improve human resilience to the destabilising effects of stress. It will also examine whether there is a “dark side” of focusing on individual human resilience that benefits organisations.