Employee engagement, wellbeing and resilience in a post-disaster context

Sanna Malinen, Joana Kuntz & Katharina Näswall

Employee Resilience Research Group

University of Canterbury

Source: Wikipedia

• How are employees coping in the (long-term) aftermath of the earthquakes?

– How should we measure this?

• How do support and resources provided by the organisation influence employee attitudes and their resilience?

Source: www.gns.cri.nz

Overall research programme

Leading and Managing Resilient Organisations

Interviews with Snr Mgmt

Focus groups & surveys with line-

managers

Surveys with front-line staff

Focus groups with line-mgmt

• Finance sector org, headquarters outside Canterbury – Performance issues in Canterbury

– Workshops run 2013 & 2014

• Context - Relocation of main office, branches

- Changes in customer base as residents relocate

- Continually changing circumstances

Source: Stuff.co.nz

Three major themes from focus groups

Theme 1. Organisational Support

• Organisation very supportive immediately after event(s) • Water, showers, washing machines • ”Earthquake leave” • EAP counselling

• A premature move to pre-quake targets & BAU • Lack of understanding by organisational members from

other regions of the local situation and the on-going challenges

”…move on…yeah, you might have some stuff and things might be going on but you’ve got to get these targets, you’ve got to do this thing or you know business in life just keeps going…”

Source: Wikipedia

1 to 3

days……………………………………………….time……………………………………………………..….?????

years

Trigger events and Anniversary Reactions

Pre-disaster

“Heroic” Honeymoon

(Community Cohesion)

Disillusionment

Reconstruction

A New Beginning

Warning

Threat

Impact

Working through Grief

Source: Zunin & Meyers

1 to 3 days……………………………………………….time……………………………………………………..….????? years

Theme 2. Lack of resources

• Initial goodwill running out

• Increased emotional labour, extra-role demands, lack of training

“Because we are now dealing with people who’ve had two years of major impacts on their lives. A year ago with a year’s worth of major impacts and they’re very, very demanding – little things tick them off and at the frontline we’re just constantly bombarded with customers who are totally unreasonable, having goes at our staff and it’s got worse…”

Source: Wikipedia

Theme 3. Commitment

• Strong commitment to team and customers

• ”…so our fundamental reason for being here and I think that most people that work in a [industry] are in it because they like to have – getting that buzz when you do something good for your staff and your customer”

Workshops after wellbeing intervention (2014)

• Following initial workshops in 2013, a strong focus on (5 ways to) wellbeing

• Follow up workshops:

– Coping with the ‘new normal’

– Lack of resources still a challenge, but better recognition of efforts & focus on wellbeing

Quantitative research component

• Measuring line-manager and front-line staff attitudes, engagement and resilience in this post-disaster environment • Tracking how employees are coping, evaluating interventions • Data collection on-going

• Resilience a popular concept in the recovery process, but – • Employee perspective rarely studied in resilience research

Organisational and employee resilience

• Organisational resilience:

Ability to successfully deal with challenges and actually grow from them (www.resorg.org.nz)

• Development of employee resilience (empres) measure • Based on focus groups and discussions with resilience

researchers and the ‘Resilient Organisations’ framework focusing on networking, adaptive capacity, and change leadership.

Employee Resilience

Employee capability, facilitated and supported by the organisation, to utilize resources to continually adapt and

flourish at work, even when faced with challenging circumstances.

• Employee resilience consists of behaviors aimed at getting through and learning from challenges

• All require an environment which supports and encourage proactive coping, collaboration, and learning

Employee Resilience (EmpRes) measure

Change readiness “I effectively adapt to change at work.”

Adaptive capacity “I continuously re-evaluate my performance and strive to improve the way I do my work.”

Utilizing networks “I approach managers when I need their expertise.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

Method

• Infrastructure organisation with vital role in rebuild and recovery • Working directly with construction and power supply

• Surveys among all employees, online for office workers, paper for field staff

• Response rate: Paper 40.7%; Online 86.7%

• N=180

Source: Stuff.co.nz Source: www.interhomeopathy.org

EmpRes correlations with other factors

r with Employee resilience

Participation .48

Culture of learning .39

Org support .54

Supervisor support .47

Sup family support .31

Job satisfaction .52

Affective commitment .43

Turnover intention -.41

OCB .64

Engagement (composite) .65 All correlations significant at p < .05

Source: pogostick.co.nz

Further evidence

• Organisational support the strongest predictor of empres (beyond that of team & supervisory support, learning culture)

• Half-longitudinal design:

– empres (time 1) related to job sat, commitment, engagement and withdrawal attitudes (time 2)

Conclusions

• Organisations & employees affected by aftermath of disasters long after the event(s)

– Lack of understanding of long-term recovery

• Measure of employee resilience a way of tracking employee progress in recovery & evaluate interventions

– Employee resilience related to important employee-related attitudes and organisational outcomes

• Positive working environment plays a key role in employee resilience

Acknowledgements – Research group

Qualitative Team Quantitative Team

Dr Venkataraman Nilakant, co-leader

Dr Joana Kuntz

Dr Bernard Walker, co-leader

Dr Katharina Näswall

Dr Rosemary Baird

Dr Kate van Heugten

Dr Sanna Malinen

Dr Herb de Vries

Thank you!

sanna.malinen@canterbury.ac.nz

http://www.psyc.canterbury.ac.nz/research/empres/