As the global economic race sets in, it is leaders' responsibility to organise work in a way that does not harm people's health
This "global race" business is no laughing matter. It's as if the organisers of the London 2012 Olympics want us all to stay in training. The language of fitness and athleticism is everywhere: we have to be flexible, we have to be agile, we have to be nimble.
And now, it seems, we have to be resilient too. The civil service is the latest organisation to support "resilience training" as a way of helping staff deal with the pressures of work. Ursula Brennan, permanent secretary at the ministry of justice, told the FT that colleagues could benefit from developing coping skills in today's tougher climate.
Who could be against resilience, or greater fitness come to think of it? The healthy worker may be more resistant to colds and flu, and will have the energy to keep going when others start to tire. Economists continue to worry about the chronic poor productivity in the UK. A lack of resilience may have something to do with it. Whether you are on a late or early shift, there is work to be done and targets to be hit. That means being ready and able to perform.
But what are we really talking about when we use the word "resilience"? Calmly rising above the daily irritations of the workplace is one thing. Suppressing anxiety in an attempt to appear in control is another. If the demands being made on people are unreasonable then trying to stay resilient may be unwise. Everyone has a breaking point, no matter how stiff their upper lip.
Paul Farmer, chief executive of the mental health charity Mind, says that resilience can be a useful term when it refers to ways of boosting your mental wellbeing. "Talking about mental health is still a taboo in many workplaces," he says. He supports "any training which can equip staff with the skills they need to help look after their own mental wellbeing".
There is a caveat, however. Resilience should not be seen as a way of putting up with anything. "Nobody should be expected to cope with ever-increasing demands, excessive workloads and longer working hours," he says.
What really adds to stress and a sense of powerlessness at work is a loss of autonomy, either as a result of poor work organisation or the impossibility of being able to speak up. And while it might seem refreshing to hear a senior civil servant discussing the need for a more open culture and better two-way communication between bosses and employees, if in practice this doesn't happen then stress levels are likely to rise.
If only there were a large piece of research into workplace health conducted over many years to provide the evidence we need to know how to organise our work better. But of course this research does exist: it is the decades-long study led by Sir Michael Marmot into the health of… civil servants.
What Marmot has shown is that it is status and control that matter more than resilience, cognitive skills or attitude. It may be tough at the top, but it is considerably tougher lower down. "The high-status person has a lot of demand," says Marmot, "but he or she has a lot of control, and the combination of high demand and low control is what's stressful."
So while we should be encouraging employees to develop skills to help them cope with workload pressures, which will include "framing" techniques and building a more resilient outlook, it is the responsibility of leaders to organise work in a way that does not harm people's health.
Health at work turns out to be another revealing indicator in the biggest story of our times: inequality. As Marmot says: "Health inequalities that are judged to be avoidable by reasonable means and are not avoided are wrong, they're unjust, they're unfair." Tell the boss, if you dare.