Resilience: the business buzzword for 2021

Business leaders and managers spent 2020 trying to lead against the backdrop of COVID-19. With lockdown restrictions set to continue into spring 2021, they’re now looking for renewed confidence, inspiration and advice to help them build the resilience needed to navigate towards a brighter future.

More than ever before, employers need to go the extra mile to help and support new and transferable skills that will help their businesses succeed

Jill Whittaker, Managing Director, The Executive Development Network

With this is mind, ‘resilience’ already looks set to be the business buzzword for 2021. Jill Whittaker, Managing Director of EDN, says: “No matter what industry you’re in, during periods of lockdown nobody wants to feel as if elements of their life are being put on hold. When it comes to our careers, learning and development is a big motivator and helps us to continue pushing ourselves. Gaining new skills is a hugely positive step in our careers. It helps teams to build resilience and feel inspired to put their knowledge and skills into practice.”

“More than ever before, employers need to go the extra mile to help and support new and transferable skills that will help their businesses succeed. Our trusted team of expert tutors are hungry to pass on their knowledge via our business-embedded apprenticeship programmes, delivering defined benefits well beyond the achievement of a qualification – they help to provide a lasting legacy of learning.”…

2021: The Year of Organizational Resilience

After the Great Recession of 2007, a study by Harvard Business Review offered a key finding: The recovery of companies that cut costs by downsizing lagged far behind companies that increased operational efficiencies and minimized layoffs — or avoided them altogether.

A 2020 survey by online employment platform Monster revealed that 69% of employees experienced burnout symptoms while working from home during the pandemic.

Why is this meaningful? It points to a model of organizational resilience we need right now. The study analyzed 4,700 companies from three different time periods: the 1980 crisis, the 1990 slowdown, and the 2000 bust. Seventeen percent of those companies didn’t survive their respective recession at all. And the vast majority of the ones that did survive failed to meet pre-recession metrics even three years after its end.

However, the 9% of companies that focused on operational efficiency thrived after the recession. And in most cases, they actually improved financial performance. How?…