The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025, released in January, brings together the perspectives of over 1,000 leading global employers - collectively representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies from around the world—to examine how these drivers impact jobs and skills, and workforce transformation strategies employers will undertake in response, from 2025 to 2030.

“Technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition – individually and in combination – are among the major drivers expected to shape and transform the global labour market by 2030.”

The most critical skills selected by surveyed organisations were:

1.     Analytical thinking

2.     Resilience, flexibility and agility

3.     Leadership and social influence

I want to focus on resilience in this newsletter because it is the most straightforward skill to learn yet the one that eludes most organisations. Too many organisations are duped into parting with excessive amounts of money with the promise of a more resilient workforce and get no return on the investment.

The top 10 industries wanting to increase these skills between 2025 and 2030 are shown in the following graph.

Source: https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_Report_2025.pdf

The predicament

Organisations that get no return on investment from their efforts to build a resilient workforce do not understand what resilience is.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), “Resilience is the process and outcomes of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”

The keywords in the definition are:

Process. It is a continuous process with a series of actions or events to achieve a particular outcome.

Adapting. Adaptation enables a person to adjust to the conditions of a particular environment.

Experiences. Experiences are things that happen which affect a person.

Adjustment. It is a process involving ongoing strategies for a person to cope with a challenging situation.

The parameters

When you understand what resilience is, these are the considerations or parameters around which you build a resilient workforce.

There cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution. Everyone has different experiences, coping mechanisms, and desired outcomes.  

You cannot make someone resilient. You can enable them, but you cannot do this to people. You must provide every employee with the time and resources to become resilient. They must know what to do and when and be supported.

This is a continuous process, not a one-off workshop or training course.

The solution must be contextual and variable. Each challenge an employee faces can differ in shape, size and substance. Therefore, they need access to appropriate resources to address each challenge and the context in which they find themselves.

Not every challenge can be resolved through cultivating gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness. Whilst these may be valuable tools in certain situations, they may not be in others.

For example, if I have a complex problem to solve within a tight deadline and am struggling, I may become anxious and stressed, and my resilience may be low. The tools I need are more likely to be problem-solving techniques, approaches to effective collaboration, and self-efficacy.

If I have a fractious relationship with a colleague, weakening my resilience, I may need emotional intelligence, self-observation, and active listening tools.

Understanding that everyone needs access to time and resources that are contextual to address the unique situation that an individual finds themselves in means the right resources can be sourced.

Before those resources can be of any use, there is a fundamental obstacle that every organisation must address – mental health stigma.

LIMITED OFFER: Order your copy of Unleash the Resiliator Within – Resilience: A Handbook for Individuals and Unleash the Resiliator Within – Resilience: A Handbook for Leaders by 28 February 2025, and enter code RESILIENCE at checkout to receive your 15% discount.

The precursor

Removal of the stigma around mental health is a precursor to the success of any attempt to build a resilient workforce.

When an individual lacks resilience, they can become overwhelmed by difficult or stressful situations. They can have feelings of inadequacy or low self-esteem. They can suffer anxiety and depression. All of these are mental health conditions.

Mental health stigma is when someone has an unfair attitude or belief about a person with mental health challenges. When a mental health stigma prevails in an organisation, those with a mental health condition may be viewed negatively, treated differently and made to feel ashamed or embarrassed about their condition. It can lead to discrimination.

Comcare is a government agency that delivers Australian work health and safety and workers’ compensation. It outlines the impacts of mental health stigma in the workplace.

“Stigma in the workplace can:

• lead to discriminatory behaviour towards workers with experiences of mental health issues, including bullying and harassment

• exclude workers with experiences of mental health issues from work activities, promotion opportunities, and other workplace engagements

• prevent those with experiences of mental health issues from feeling safe to disclose and seek support from their manager/supervisor and others around them

• lead to absenteeism, decreased productivity, social withdrawal

• make recovery and return to work harder.”

This short video from the Black Dog Institute explains how mental-health-related stigma impacts people in the workplace.

As the video calls out, 1 in 6 of the Australian working population is suffering from a diagnosable mental illness. 50% of managers believe no one in their place of work is affected by mental illness. Less than 40% of people affected will seek medical help. 

Mental health stigma in the workplace is a self-perpetuating issue. A survey conducted by Wayahead in Australia in 2023 revealed that 1 in 7 respondents would conceal their mental health issues from their employer due to fear of discrimination. Therefore, until the stigma is eradicated, employers will remain unaware of their employees’ needs and unable to provide the necessary support.

I have worked with numerous senior leadership teams, who are proud to highlight their cohort of Mental Health First Aiders (MHFAiders), who can listen and offer support to those in need. I often ask about the initiatives underway to reduce mental health stigma within the organisation. Frequently, I receive blank stares or silence in response. This usually leads to a discussion about who will reach out to the MHFAiders if there is a stigma attached to mental health and a fear of discrimination or repercussion. Once again, there will be limited return on the investment.

If you are not actively working to remove the stigma of mental health in your organisation, do not even start to think about investing in resources to build a resilient workforce. People will not use them.

Plenty of guidance and help is available, including the Mental Notes program from Comcare. This program includes practical resources for managers and supervisors, factsheets and information, and creative materials.

The panacea

When you are looking for resources to help build resilience, ensure they are contextual and meet the needs of every individual in the organisation.

This was the reason I wrote two books back in 2020.

Unleash the Resiliator Within – Resilience: A Handbook for Individuals

Unleash the Resiliator Within – Resilience: A Handbook for Leaders

We need people at every level of an organisation who can deal with the difficulties, demands, uncertainties and pressures that will inevitably come their way. I call these people The Resiliators. They thrive through these adverse conditions because they possess many superpowers to use depending on the situation in which they find themselves.

Individuals

These are the superpowers for individuals. 

As you can see, these superpowers will help build resilience across many situations. Sometimes, you may only need to utilise one superpower. Sometimes, you may need two or more.

An assessment of how individuals have felt about their resilience at work over the past two weeks will suggest the superpowers that need to be focused on. Individuals can apply their preferences and judgement to select one or more of the suggested superpowers.

Leaders

As I was writing the handbook for individuals, it soon became evident that I would need to write a handbook for leaders. The individual has access to a superpower called The Revealer, enabling them to be their authentic self. Trying to adopt a persona in the belief that others will like us or respect us more is exhausting and lowers our resilience.

The Revealer dares to ask questions, admit when they don't understand or ask for help, and make genuine connections.

What if an individual used The Revealer superpower and asked their manager why a particular decision had been made and got shut down immediately for daring to question a management direction?

The Revealer superpower can only be used in an environment of psychological safety, where everyone can ask questions without fear of repercussion. Therefore, the leader’s handbook contains a superpower called The Caretaker that enables the leader to create such an environment.

There is also The Removalist superpower for leaders that enables them to remove the stigma of mental health in the workplace.

These are the superpowers available for leaders.

The point

Overcome the predicament and get a return on investment from your resilience initiatives.

Understand the parameters of a successful resilience program. Address the precursor to any initiatives and remove the mental health stigma in the workplace. Seek out a panacea that is contextual and meets the needs of every individual in the organisation and the situations in which they may find themselves. Give everyone the superpowers to be resilient 

LIMITED OFFER: Order your copy of Unleash the Resiliator Within – Resilience: A Handbook for Individuals and Unleash the Resiliator Within – Resilience: A Handbook for Leaders by 28 February 2025, and enter code RESILIENCE at checkout to receive your 15% discount.