Resilience in Times of Global Pandemic: Steering Recovery and Thriving Trajectories
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Disasters, including earthquakes, wildfires, terrorist attacks, and infectious disease outbreaks, are catastrophic events that expose individuals to stress, disrupt community routines and dynamics, undermine infrastructure and businesses, and result in economic losses for a significant period (Bader, Schuster, & Dickmann, 2019; Bakić, 2019). The World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic in the early months of 2020 and classed it as a major disaster. This pandemic is unique, one of few catastrophic events in recent history to affect the entire global population, and its severity and long-term consequences will test individuals, organisations, communities, and nations in unprecedented ways. The COVID-19 pandemic exemplifies an acute extraorganisational stressor, and it differs from chronic workplace stressors such as role overload or work-life conflict in terms of its magnitude, scope, and impact on personal, social, and organisational resources (Biggs, Brough, & Barbour, 2014). Acute stressors pose double-edged swords in occupational settings: on the one hand, they can be trauma-inducing and destabilise individuals and workplaces for an extended period; on the other hand, the stress responses these acute stressors trigger are often catalysts to positive adaptation and growth, that is, resilience (Liu, Ein, Gervasio, & Vickers, 2019). At the individual level, disaster resilience encompasses the range of positive and negative human reactions to the heightened stress caused by a significant adverse event, and is reflected on distinct trajectories (Fisher, Ragsdale, & Fisher, 2019; Tedeschi, Calhoun, Shakespeare-Finch, & Taku, 2018). A survival trajectory signals a stress response characterised by impaired cognitive and affective functioning in the immediate aftermath of exposure to an acute stressor. Over time and with adequate resources, this course may evolve to an upward recovery trajectory, or, in the absence of support, slip into decline (survival-to-decline). Recovery indicates a resilience trajectory wherein individuals restore regular psychosocial functioning following a temporary phase of impairment immediately after the disaster. Thriving, also labelled post-traumatic growth, is a resilience trajectory that may ensue from recovery, and reflects the capacity to rely upon and further develop personal and social resources in the aftermath of a disaster, resulting in positive adaptation. The latter trajectory occurs when individuals frame the crisis as an opportunity to generate new resources and grow, rather than as a threat to wellbeing which they must overcome and emotionally recover from (Fisher et al., 2019; Shakespeare-Finch, Bowen-Salter, Cashin, Badawi, Wells, Rosenbaum, & Steel, 2020; Tedeschi et al., 2018). Scholars have defined resilience as the ability to bounce back from crises and to modify goals and behaviours to cope with changes in the environment, emphasising the adaptive principles underlying a recovery trajectory (e.g., Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003). Others explored how organisations can support a thriving trajectory and identified the proactive and transformational keystones of resilience that enable individuals to continually develop resources (e.g., Nilakant et al., 2016). Resilience in the workplace is, therefore, a multifaceted and multilevel construct that signifies: a protective factor evolving from a set of personal attributes that allows individuals to restore a state of wellbeing following exposure to adversity (Bonanno, 2004; Southwick, Bonanno, Masten, Panter-Brick, & Yehuda, 2014); a dynamic cognitive-emotional process of utilising personal, social, and environmental resources to adapt to chronic and acute stressors (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013; Shaw, McLean, Taylor, & Swartout, 2016); and the capability to proactively develop resources as preparedness factors to effectively cope with and even thrive in the face of adversity (e.g., Kuntz, Malinen, & Näswall, 2017; Vanhove, Herian, Perez, Harms, & Lester, 2016). Irrespective of their predominantly restorative/adaptive or futureproofing/proactive precepts, contemporary perspectives of resilience consistently underline its part in human functioning and recuperation in the aftermath of a disaster (Bakić, 2019; Shakespeare-Finch et al., 2020). The immediate and protracted effects of disasters on workers' stress and health, along with the role of resilience as a personal resource that protects against their negative effects while also promoting post-traumatic growth, have attracted significant attention in the literature (e.g., Maitlis, 2020; Tedeschi et al., 2018; Walker, Malinen, Näswall, Nilakant, & Kuntz, 2020). Specifically, researchers have observed that even though people differ with regard to their personal resources, stressor appraisals, and initial stress responses when exposed to a disaster, individual resilience trajectories tend to converge within workplaces over time (Carvalho & Areal, 2016; Nilakant et al., 2016). This suggests that an organisation may steer recovery or thriving trajectories by managing psychosocial risks and developing resources among employees and teams, thus, ensuring organisational-level resilience, or fail to support upward resilience trajectories among staff and contribute to its own survival-to-decline trajectory. Nevertheless, there remains significant imprecision around the risk and supportive factors linked to distinct resilience trajectories following a major disaster, and regarding the generalisability of these factors across disaster types. The principal aim of this paper is to chart lines of inquiry for workplace resilience research and add to our understanding of general and disaster-specific psychosocial risks and resilience-promoting factors that uniquely shape resilience trajectories in organisations. To that end, the paper intersects the growing body of evidence on resilience and disaster response with data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore the boundary conditions and generalisability of the extant research across disasters. Its starting point is an overview of the factors that account for inter-individual differences in stress appraisals and ensuing resilience trajectories following exposure to an acute stressor, clarifying the role of organisations in managing psychosocial risks and enabling resilience. Next, it discusses the findings from a qualitative survey conducted in a cross-sector sample of 61 New Zealand workers in the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, uncovering worker experiences of pandemic-related stressors and of organisational crisis response. These results are juxtaposed with the psychosocial risks and support factors commonly identified in the resilience and disaster management literatures to ascertain the risks and resilience-promoting aspects that are unique to a disease outbreak, common across disasters, and how they influence resilience trajectories. The final section of the paper integrates these findings with resilience development research and recent scholarly accounts of psychosocial risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic to suggest employee-focused strategies that steer recovery and thriving resilience trajectories. Here, it is proposed that organisations can build resilience in the aftermath of a major disaster by helping employees reframe stressors and stress experiences uniquely related to the disaster, and actively engage with or further develop organisational resources to manage these stressors. While acute stressors such as natural disasters normally elicit trauma responses, the recovery trajectories that follow are contingent on initial appraisals of the stressor and of the existing resources to cope with it. Scholars have recently suggested that individual appraisals of an acute stressor and its impact are likely disaster-specific, domain-specific, and the upshot of personal, social, and broader contextual factors (Bader et al., 2019; Fisher et al., 2019; Lim et al., 2020; Yao & Hsieh, 2019). For instance, an individual may perceive a global financial crisis as presenting a very different level of personal risk compared to an earthquake or a disease outbreak, and feel better equipped to deal with or even capitalise on one of these events compared to the others. Threat and opportunity appraisals linked to specific disasters may also differ between work and personal domains or be interpreted as equally impactful across the two domains. In either instance, the combination of personal characteristics and the social and organisational contexts in which individuals are embedded yield distinctive appraisals of a disaster, from evaluations of risk and threat level, to its interpretation as an obstacle to wellbeing or as an opportunity to grow. In essence, the initial appraisal of a stressor—overwhelming threat, manageable challenge, or opportunity—offers a strong indication of individual resilience and provides a starting point for estimating resilience trajectories following exposure to an acute stressor (Brunetto, Dick, Xerri, & Cully, 2019; Liu, Ein, et al., 2019). The next segments describe the suite of personal factors that contribute to individual resilience, stress appraisals following exposure to adversity, and the organisational factors that also influence these appraisals and shape resilient responses. Genes, emotional regulation, personality traits, affect, and early life experiences are depicted in the literature as individual factors that influence appraisals of adversity and resilient responses to challenges (e.g., DeSimone, Harms, Vanhove, & Herian, 2017; Hartmann, Weiss, Newman, & Hoegl, 2020; Kuntz et al., 2017). With respect to genes and neuroendocrine elements, elevated neuropeptide-Y (NPY) and a higher ratio of DHEA-to-cortisol have been linked to resilient responses following moderate or severe stress exposure (Yao & Hsieh, 2019). NPY regulates stress reactivity, and higher levels of NPY are associated to stress coping ability through regulation of heart rate, breathing, and arousal. Contrasting with heightened anxiety reactions, these measured physiological responses produce changes to the synaptic strengths related to negative memories, altering subsequent appraisals of adversity, and increasing resilience (Gan, Chen, Han, Yu, & Wang, 2019). This genetic component allows individuals to regulate physiological stress responses, which in turn proves advantageous in reframing stressful events as manageable challenges rather than overwhelming threats, and in facilitating adaptive responses. Emotional regulation comprises another individual resilience factor that influences recovery following exposure to adverse events. High emotional regulation is correlated with a greater sense of efficacy in dealing with challenges, improved immune function, the deployment of adaptive and proactive coping mechanisms, and the ability to secure social support as needed (Badu et al., 2020; Yao & Hsieh, 2019). Relatedly, positive affect and the experience of positive emotions denote personal resources associated with the capacity to handle crises. Positive emotions sustain constructive and pragmatic appraisals of challenging situations, guiding adaptive strategies, and supporting wellbeing (e.g., Fredrickson, 2001). Further to emotional regulation and the capacity to draw on positive emotions to frame adverse situations as opportunities, personality traits and other personal resources linked to individual resilience include conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experience, and self-efficacy. Higher levels of conscientiousness are associated with increased ability and motivation toward goal persistence, and to carry out everyday duties through major disruption; emotional stability has been identified as a protective factor against anxiety and depression and related to effective coping capacity and strategies; higher levels of self-efficacy concerning one's ability to cope with challenges ensure task persistence in the face of adversity (Hartmann et al., 2020; Lyons, Schweitzer, & Ng, 2015). Together, these individual resilience factors increase the likelihood that workers facing acute stressors are on track for recovery or thriving trajectories, compared to workers who possess lower levels of these attributes, through their positive effect on the appraisal component of resilience. Nevertheless, no person is impervious to the protracted and cumulative effects of chronic and acute stressors, as evidenced by post-disaster resilience studies showing that the availability of resources and psychosocial risk management in the organisation are key differentiating factors of workers' resilience trajectories following a crisis, through their impact on the positive adaptation component of resilience (Malinen, Hatton, Näswall, & Kuntz, 2019; Nilakant et al., 2016). In the days and weeks after a disaster, it is standard for workers to go through the initial "heroic" and "honeymoon" periods of their resilience trajectory, characterised by a boost in team cohesion, increased sense of meaning and impact, and emotional growth (Brooks, Dunn, Amlôt, Rubin, & Greenberg, 2019). However, disasters often signify prolonged exposure to an acute stressor or to its effects. When organisations provide insufficient resources and support, and especially at lower levels of individual resilience, the cumulative effects of the acute stressor with daily stressors that characterise workplaces will prompt declining trajectories. Evidence from post-disaster research suggests that individuals exposed to the protracted effects of a disaster and to ongoing chronic stressors at work display sustained high cortisol levels. High cortisol levels deplete cognitive functioning, and along with sleep disruption contribute to cardiovascular disease, lapses of attention and memory, and reduced immune responses accounting for lengthier recovery from minor illness and injuries (Heath, Sommerfield, & von Ungern-Sternberg, 2020; Helton & Head, 2012). These psychophysiological responses pose additional challenges for workplaces in the aftermath of a disaster, and signal the importance of identifying resilience-promoting factors that buffer against negative stress effects to enable recovery trajectories while sidestepping survival-to-decline trajectories (Heath et al., 2020; Mandavia & Bonanno, 2019). Recent scholarly works offer systematic, multilevel descriptions of resilience-promoting resources, spanning team, organisational, and extraorganisational levels of analysis (e.g., Hartmann et al, 2020; Hartwig, Clarke, Johnson, & Willis, 2020; Lim et al., 2020). The resources most frequently cited as resilience-promoting factors that develop capability and effectively address psychosocial risks include teamwork quality, a learning culture, participation in decision-making, flexibility, role clarity, ongoing feedback, clear organisational communications, peer and leadership support, and developmental opportunities (e.g., Cooke, Cooper, Bartram, Wang, & Mei, 2019; Kuntz et al., 2017; Lim et al., 2020). Carvalho and Areal (2016) submitted a longitudinal analysis of the financial performance of organisations dubbed "best places to work". Workplaces that boasted high quality employee support performed better across sectors, irrespective of market conditions, some even over-performing in financial downturn periods. These findings are consistent with other research indicating that organisations provide the supportive resources listed above as part of their crisis preparedness strategy, pre-empting employees to develop a growth mindset and capabilities, which enables post-crisis recovery and thriving trajectories (e.g., Bader et al., 2019; Walker et al., 2020). It is worth noting that scholars have recently exposed the paucity of guidelines for stress and resilience management in disaster contexts. This lack of direction has been credited to the limited availability of academic works that elucidate the complex interplay of: (a) individual resilience and stress responses; (b) unique psychosocial risks and temporal issues associated with varied disasters; and (c) organisational practices and systems that contribute to effective risk management and resilience development across disaster types (e.g., Bader et al., 2019; Caligiuri, De Cieri, Minbaeva, Verbeke, & Zimmermann, 2020). Hence, as disaster type represents a critical and seldom explored boundary condition that determines resilience trajectories, it is important to examine whether and to what extent the resilience-promoting factors identified in the research translate across disasters, including the COVID-19 outbreak. This next section examines data from a sample of workers during the early stages of the pandemic and relies on this evidence to posit the generalizable and pandemic-specific factors that shape distinct resilience trajectories. On 19 March 2020, following the WHO's official announcement of the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic, New Zealand closed its borders and entry ports to non-residents. Two days later, the government announced a four-tiered alert level system to manage the outbreak in the population (Unite Against COVID-19, 2020), and on 25 March the country effectively moved to the highest alert level (Level 4—Lockdown). Under Level 4, people were instructed to stay at home, restrict interaction to their immediate family, and limit recreational activity to their area of residence. While essential services were open (e.g., supermarkets, pharmacies, and lifeline utilities), businesses and educational facilities only operated online. One month later, the alert level was moved down (Level 3—Restrict). This decision alleviated some of the restrictions, but it still meant that people legally had to work from home unless that was not possible, that businesses other than essential services could not provide services that required close personal contact (e.g., retail, hospitality), and healthcare services were advised to rely on non-contact consultations. These significant restrictions, which affected most businesses in the country, were lifted on 13 May, though the public and workplaces were advised to maintain physical distancing and enforce gathering size limits (Level 2—Reduce). The data from the qualitative survey reported here were collected immediately following the transition from Level 3 to Level 2, as part of academic coursework carried out by a group of students to register timely accounts of workers' "lockdown" and "restrict" level experiences across sectors. This qualitative exercise explored the impact of the pandemic on individuals and workplaces, particularly its stress effects, the emergence or intensification of job demands, and the availability of suitable job resources (Biggs et al., 2014; Hochwarter, Laird, & Brouer, 2008). Essential and non-essential workers described their work experiences during the global pandemic, including the resources and support provided by their organisation. Primary data were collected from 61 workers throughout New Zealand during the month of May 2020. The sample included workers in managerial (17) and non-managerial roles (44), and from several sectors, namely services (18), healthcare (14), food distribution (11), education (7), retail/hospitality (7), and manufacturing (3). Although only 29 participants were classed as essential workers, 52 reported working during Level 4 (lockdown), as 33 worked from home during this period. Due to contact restrictions and other challenges in securing participants to volunteer their time for a virtual interview, a convenience sampling approach was carried out, whereby the large group of interviewers drew on their personal networks and each identified one eligible and willing participant. Participants were ensured that their interviewer would not share the recording of the interview or their name with anyone, including the author of this paper, who had no contact with the interviewees and received only detailed interview summaries with some emblematic quotes. Pseudonyms were used in lieu of names to ensure anonymity. The organisations identified by name in the interviews were anonymised in the analysis and grouped according to sector. Interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes. The findings reported here result from the analysis of detailed interview summaries, rather than from interview transcripts, which represents a significant methodological limitation. 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When the aspects of the job they most stressful in the period spanning the "lockdown" and "restrict" the interviewees identified stressors or role managerial support and at job teamwork and work-life While most of these challenges some were specific to or to job of the interviewees increased job and time as role stressors during and the transition to a contact Participants reported a sense of they had to and growing at often with insufficient time and resources to In a disaster increased and job are often by work working and time et al., 2019). In the stress response a sense of physical and emotional and reduced cognitive capacity to sustain task performance and quality, and further stress levels et al., 2019; et al., 2020; Helton & Head, 2012). these role stressors steer a survival-to-decline trajectory. Participants and role especially in the and sectors. The reported that managing the transition from to developing consistent with virtual and and increased contact time to provide academic support had in which required to work in the especially in that the to along with or heightened demands, to work significant time and to in to manage increased job interviewees reported increased time to and the of the social distancing with the workers staff that a significant of role to Health and guidelines that or work lack of support from was as a significant stressor by of the accounts lack of clear around changes from restrictions, lack of the of the and support for staff research that and wellbeing support from a resilience resource to cope with the and disruption associated with a major disaster, and pose a significant risk factor for employees when et al., 2019; Walker et al., 2020). In the aftermath of a disaster, it is common for to experience work their availability and capacity to offer support or engage in regular with staff et al., 2008). and restrict the ability to provide resilience-promoting resources associated with upward trajectories, namely ongoing feedback, role clarity, and This was by interviewees in the and sectors. of the participants in the that seldom for the additional work required of these essential workers, to work and and often to provide clear and Health and guidelines through the alert levels. 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Source: Applied Psychology
DOI: 10.1111/apps.12296
Author: Joana C. Kuntz
Institution: University of Canterbury
Language: English
Topic: Resilience and Mental Health
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3106852317