{"id":1688,"date":"2026-09-14T11:57:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T11:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/09\/14\/employers-look-for-resilient-staff-then-leave-them-to-burn-out\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T11:57:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T11:57:28","slug":"employers-look-for-resilient-staff-then-leave-them-to-burn-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/09\/14\/employers-look-for-resilient-staff-then-leave-them-to-burn-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Employers look for resilient staff \u2013 then leave them to burn out"},"content":{"rendered":"
Workers are often tested beyond their limits and require strong resilience<\/span> Dragana Gordic \/ Shutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cResilience\u201d is in danger of becoming a casualty of business buzzword bingo, but we know it matters. The World Economic Forum lists it as one of the most important skills for the future of work, and I\u2019ve found it turns up on any list of key attributes, usually nestled under \u201cattitude\u201d or \u201cpersonal effectiveness\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ask hiring<\/a> managers which single quality determines success or failure in their new recruits, and many will cite resilience. One research interviewee said to me a lack of it is \u201cthe number one reason why hires don\u2019t work in my team\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ask that same person how they build resilience in their group and vagueness creeps in. \u201cYou pick it up in the interview\u201d, or it\u2019s a \u201ccultural fit\u201d, they say. Most people don\u2019t actually know how, so they wait and see who survives when things go wrong.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the trouble starts. Bosses select for a quality they have no plan to develop, then act surprised when people burn out<\/a> under conditions they created. If resilience determines whether someone succeeds in a role, selecting for it while eroding it is close to self-sabotage.<\/p>\n

\n \"A
\n Waiting for a crisis and then seeing who comes through it is not the best strategy.<\/span>
\n PeopleImages<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The underlying practice treats adversity as the teacher. Wait for the crisis, watch who comes through it, call that resilience. That\u2019s a gamble, not a strategy. You cannot build capacity for a crisis at the precise moment you\u2019re facing one. Asking someone already burnt out to \u201cbuild their resilience\u201d is a bit like asking them to learn to deadlift while running a marathon. Resilience-building and burnout prevention get treated as interchangeable, and they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I learned this the hard way. A decade or so ago, after a period of personal difficulty, my boss told me I was the most resilient person he knew. \u201cYeah,\u201d I said, \u201clike a little cockroach you can\u2019t get rid of.\u201d He gently pulled me up on it as it\u2019s not a nice comparison, but it summed up the very negative associations I had with resilience. It led to years of research and eventually my book, Brilliantly Bouncy<\/a>, where my biggest shift was realising resilience is a process, not an outcome. I call it positive resilience: building capacity during calm periods rather than scrambling for it under pressure.<\/p>\n

\u2018Can\u2019t\u2019 is usually \u2018not yet\u2019<\/h2>\n

Building backwards from the desired end result costs individuals too, because the moment someone hits a wall, we reach for the wrong diagnosis. Most failures of resilience are really timing or resourcing problems, dressed up as personal toughness.<\/p>\n

One shift I return to constantly is the difference between \u201ccan\u2019t\u201d and \u201cnot yet\u201d. When I hit a \u201ccan\u2019t\u201d, I ask why. Sometimes it\u2019s the wrong moment, so it goes on what I call my parking lot rather than becoming evidence of failure. Sometimes someone isn\u2019t convinced yet, so the task becomes building a case rather than giving up. Either way, identifying the obstacle changes what you do next. That\u2019s a different skill to get hold of.<\/p>\n

The building backwards approach also treats resilience as something you\u2019re meant to develop alone<\/a>, and that plays out differently depending on who you are.<\/p>\n

In my workshops, sign-ups skew heavily towards women. Digging into why men stay away, the pattern is clear: many see putting their hand up for resilience work as admitting weakness. Women more often say they simply don\u2019t have time. Different excuses, same root cause: both treat resilience as an individual toughness test rather than something built through relationships<\/a>, and both keep people from building their resilience skills.<\/p>\n

The most consistent finding across my research<\/a> is the gap between how people describe resilience (independent, self-reliant, the lone wolf) and how they build it, which is through other people<\/a>. A colleague who notices something\u2019s wrong before you say it. Someone giving you permission to stop performing fine when you\u2019re not. Resilience is, in fact, a team sport.<\/p>\n

\u2018Resilient culture\u2019 often means something else<\/h2>\n

Put the backwards approach and the solo-performance myth together and you get organisations that say they want a resilient culture<\/a>, then use the phrase to mean something closer to \u201cwill absorb dysfunction without complaint\u201d, which is essentially exhaustion with better branding.<\/p>\n

In resilient cultures, leaders<\/a> model vulnerability instead of performed calm. Support is available before<\/a> crisis hits. Starting with strengths rather than what\u2019s wrong is a more powerful entry point. Asking for help is treated as courage, because it is.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t a resilient endpoint you arrive at and stay. I still have moments where I think I\u2019m not managing this well, and have to clear my plate and practise what I preach. It\u2019s trial and error, for everyone, always.<\/p>\n

We need to stop hiring for a quality we have no plan to sustain once someone\u2019s through the door. The organisations getting this right aren\u2019t waiting for human resources to write a policy. They\u2019re building it deliberately, in the calm periods, in their teams, with their leaders, long before the next crisis makes it urgent.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Laura Chamberlain is the founder and owner of Think Talk Thrive Ltd and the author of Brilliantly Bouncy: Discover Positive Resilience. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Workers are often tested beyond their limits and require strong resilience Dragana Gordic \/ Shutterstock \u201cResilience\u201d is in danger of becoming a casualty of business buzzword bingo, but we know it matters. The World Economic Forum lists it as one of the most important skills for the future of work, and I\u2019ve found it turns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}