Strong at work

Rushing from one appointment to the next while dealing with an angry client on the phone and planning a new project: resilience helps employees successfully deal with constant work demands and even learn from them. By fostering resilience, companies can ensure their employees’ mental health and prepare them to manage future challenges. For the past two years researchers from the Universities of Freiburg and Erlangen-Nuremberg have examined how this can be done in their joint project „Resilire – resilience management across all age groups.“ The results are applicable instruments such as an internet platform and online training that are designed to assess and promote employees’ psychological well-being.

„Employees can take the survey on our internet platform www.resilire.de to determine their level of resilience,“ explains Dr. Nina Pauls, a project team member at the University of Freiburg. „What is particularly interesting is that the participants can make a direct comparison of their resilience levels with a benchmark consisting of more than 3,000 other employees.“ Furthermore, the publicly accessible platform raises the question as to how teams and even entire organizations can manage change more effectively and thereby strengthen the employees’ individual resilience.

In order to promote resilience, researchers worked together in cooperation with the Freiburg software company Haufe Lexware to develop a web-based training program. They directly tested the units’ effectiveness in various companies from different industries. „We are thrilled to discover that our first case studies prove that such a time-efficient online training program can improve participants’ resilience and overall mental health,“ reports Dr. Christian Schlett from the Professorship for Occupational and Consumer Psychology. Furthermore, presence-based formats such as in-house training embed the promotion of resilience into corporate health management structures. According to the researchers, doing so makes resilience a part of the company’s culture and can lead to long-term psychological health benefits and more financial success for the company. Companies who are interested in the online training will receive free access from the researchers.

The Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) will support Resilire for three years with their funding priority „corporate competence management through demographic change“. The University of Erlangen-Nuremberg is coordinating the project. A network of operating partners supports the project’s results assessment in company practice.

Conference in Nuremberg on July 6, 2017
The project results will be presented and discussed with the company practice and an audience interested in the scientific findings during the conference „Stark in der Arbeit!“ (Strong at work!). During the presentations the participants will learn how the team developed and designed the assessment instruments to promote resilience. In practice-oriented workshops they will try out the instruments and discuss how they can integrate resilience into their corporate health management structures. No conference fee is required. Because participation is limited, early registration, which is binding, is required on the following Website: https://www.resilire.de/tagung.php (in German).

Further information
www.resilire.de


Contact:
Dr. Nina Pauls, Dr. Christian Schlett
Professorship for Occupational and Consumer Psychology
University of Freiburg
Tel.: +49 761/203-9153, -9436
E-Mail: nina.pauls@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de, christian.schlett@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de