Resilience assessment tools are used to detect how people manage and cope in the face of stress. Resilience in the workplace is a key skill in relation to how individuals manage stress, adapt to change, sustain productivity, enhance emotional well-being, and develop team dynamics.
The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is a psychological tool which measures an individual’s ability to recover from stress and adversity, reliably measuring the speed with which people are able to recover from challenges.
What Is Resilience?
According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is “[…]…the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
Resilience, or one’s ability to “bounce back”, involves being able to:
- Accept and offer social support, leading to more fulfilling relationships and team dynamics.
- Physiologically and psychologically cope with and adapt to difficulties and challenges.
- Deal with factors which may increase the risk of developing mental health conditions.
- View challenges as opportunities to grow and innovate.
- Bounce back effectively from setbacks without significant drop offs in productivity.
Research has shown that resilience is not a fixed state, but, instead, a dynamic process which involves emotion regulation skills, social support, and effective problem-solving. Additionally, further studies have shown that resilience may be influenced by the environments and social interactions a person is experiencing 1,2
Why Is It Important to Measure Resilience?
Measuring resilience provides essential insights into mental health, well-being, and coping strategies, on an individual as well as organizational level.
Previous studies have demonstrated that in the face of adversity, individuals who possess resilience maintain better performance, have improved psychological and behavioral outcomes, and recover quicker than those with lower resilience. 3-5
If we have a resilient group of individuals, it makes it more likely an organization will also be better able to react in the face of adversity, especially when combined with a culture of psychological safety.
It’s important to measure resilience because we can:
- Identify where individuals may be more vulnerable to stress, trauma, and challenges.
- Assess risk factors and determine if and where strategies should be employed to improve resilience; also helping to prevent burnout.
- Direct leadership to consider the organization’s general well-being, and how best to promote well-being protocols and training needs for fostering performance, productivity, and satisfaction.
What Does The Brief Resilience Scale Measure?
The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) was created to measure perceived ability to “bounce back” or recover from stress and adversity. The scale was designed to put forward a unitary construct of resilience, which includes both positively and negatively worded items. 6
When undertaking The Brief Resilience Scale, participants answer six items designed to assess the individual’s:
- Perception of their resilience, including their understanding of their ability to recover from adversity.
- Coping skills when faced with adversity and emotional setbacks.
- Ability to return to normal functioning after stress or challenges.
Example Items on The BRS:
- I tend to bounce back quickly after hard times.
- I have a hard time making it through stressful events.
- It does not take me long to recover from a stressful event.
- It is hard for me to snap back when something bad happens.
- I usually come through difficult times with little trouble.
- I tend to take a long time to get over setbacks in my life.
Measure Resilience At Work With MindOnly
In our Attachment At Work assessment, MindOnly combines The Brief Resilience Scale with other tools which assess aspects of psychological well-being (including self-esteem, burnout, and emotion regulation).
Additionally, the Attachment At Work assessment helps teams to perform at their personal and professional ideal by measuring and reporting on group dynamics, including:
- Psychological safety.
- Team identification.
- Team-member exchange.
- Leader-member exchange.
- And how to lead a thriving team.
Conclusion: The Brief Resilience Scale
In our dynamic world of work, resilience is an integral asset for both individuals and teams when managing stress, adapting to change, sustaining productivity, enhancing emotional well-being and creating better team dynamics.
The Brief Resilience Scale is a valid and reliable measure which effectively measures the speed of emotional recovery for both personal and organizational contexts. Through identifying strengths and vulnerabilities, the BRS allows for the implementation of intervention strategies right from leadership across the whole organization to reach every single employee.
References
[1] Seligman, M. E. P., Reivich, K., & Schulman, P. (1990-2007). Resilience in college students: The Penn Resilience Program for college students. Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania.
[2] Ungar, M. (2011). The social ecology of resilience: Addressing contextual and cultural ambiguity of a nascent construct. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(1), 1-17.
[3] Bonanno, G. A., Galea, S., Bucciarelli, A., & Vlahov, D. (2006). What predicts psychological resilience after disaster? The role of demographics, resources, and life stress. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(5), 671-682.
[4] Masten, A. S., Cutuli, J. J., Herbers, J. E., & Reed, M. G. (2009). Resilience in development. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press.
[5] Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M. (2013). Psychological resilience: A review and critique of definitions, concepts, and theory. European Psychologist, 18(1), 12-23.
[6] Smith, B. W., Dalen, J., Wiggins, K., Tooley, E., Christopher, P., & Bernard, J. (2008). The brief resilience scale: assessing the ability to bounce back. International journal of behavioral medicine, 15(3), 194-200.
