ENACT Study: What has helped health and social care workers maintain their mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic? Adaptive coping, team resilience, help-seeking behaviour and work based supports

Rapid studies have highlighted the adverse mental health impact of COVID-19 on health and social care workers (HSCWs). Complementing this work, we report on the psychosocial factors that have helped HSCWs adapt to the adversities associated with COVID-19 and protect staff wellbeing in Scotland. The ENACT study collected data from HSCWs (n= 1364) in Scotland during the third national lockdown. Using a cross-sectional design, participants completed an online survey providing quantitative data and free responses. A multi-method approach to analysis was used. The majority of HSCWs were found to have low wellbeing scores, high levels of COVID-19 stress, worry, burnout and risk perception scores and almost half of HSCWs met the clinical cut off for acute stress. Adaptive coping strategies and increased perceived team resilience helped mitigate against the adverse impact that COVID-19 stressors have on HSCWs’ mental wellbeing. HSCWs were significantly more likely to seek informal support for dealing with personal or emotional problems. Barriers to formal help-seeking were identified including stigma and fears of consequence of disclosure. HSCWs most valued peer support, workplace supports, visible leadership and teamwork. Our findings illuminate the complexity of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on HSCWs’ wellbeing and will inform future intervention development to increase positive adaptation amongst staff. Addressing barriers to mental health help-seeking among HSCWs is essential. The implications emphasise the importance of lessons learned across health and social care contexts, planning and preparedness for future pandemics.

Bridge Over Troubled Water: Shared Understanding Bridges Individual and Collective Resources in Developing Team Resilience in Professional Football

This study explored how coaches facilitate coordinated activities through shared understanding in the processes of team resilience development. Constructs of shared information that underpin synchronised actions and behaviour in a team are investigated through individual experiences with a dialogic “we” perspective of appropriating and handling challenging situations. Interactional key elements underpin coordinated task actions within the team. Experiences of both players and coaches are investigated through semi-structured interviews and complementary texts such as an observation log and coach-meeting reports, originating as part of an action research process in the team environment. The interaction model is developed in the exploratory journey during the season with the team. The model suggests key strategic elements that help to bridge shared appropriation of information to strengthen role interactions between team members handling challenging situations. Coaching practise, which connects the interaction model to different team resources of coordinating activities in the development process, still needs to be explored from different contextual perspectives and environments, within the development of team resilience.

Leading the way: how project manager strengths can influence team resilience

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings The study takes empirical data from three case studies of projects that have faced setbacks to explore the impact of project manager signature strengths on team resilience and finds that four signature strengths, leadership, open-mindedness, persistence and hope, were present in project managers across all three case studies. Originality The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

A Qualitative Protocol to Examine Resilience Culture in Healthcare Teams during COVID-19

Resilience allows teams to function at their optimal capacity and skill level in times of uncertainty. The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic created a perfect opportunity to study resilience culture during a time of limited healthcare team experience, protocols, and specific personal protective equipment (PPE) needed. Little is known about healthcare team resilience as a phenomenon; existing definitions and empiric referents do not capture the nature of healthcare team resilience, as the traditional focus has been placed on individual resilience. This qualitative research protocol provides the rationale and methodology to examine this phenomenon and builds a bridge between resilience engineering and individual resilience. The sample is composed of healthcare team members from the US. This research may add to the body of knowledge on resilience culture in healthcare teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative research protocol paper outlines the rationale, objective, methods, and ethical considerations entailed in this research.

Fostering Resilience in New Venture Teams: The Role of Behavioral and Affective Integration

Resilience has begun to receive attention in entrepreneurship research. However, most studies focus on organizational and individual resilience; little is known about team resilience in the entrepreneurship field. To fill the gap, this study explores team resilience and its formation and function in a specific context: new venture teams (NVTs). Conceptualizing team resilience as a second-order emergent state with first-order dimensions being resilience-efficacious beliefs and resilience-adaptive capacity, this study articulates the role of behavioral integration in cultivating team resilience and tests the effect of team resilience on NVT performance. Furthermore, a double-edged sword effect of affective integration is proposed: it strengthens the link between behavioral integration and team resilience but weakens the tie between team resilience and performance. Survey data collected from 488 entrepreneurs in 110 NVTs lend support to our hypotheses. These findings add to the knowledge of team resilience in a unique entrepreneurship setting, expand our understanding of NVT effectiveness, and provide implications to NVTs in terms of resilience building and team climate management.

How structural empowerment boosts organizational resilience: A case study in the Dutch home care industry

Previous work has demonstrated that structural forms of empowerment tend to enhance individual and team resilience. However, there is hardly any knowledge about how structural empowerment affects organizational resilience. Moreover, a widespread (though largely untested) assumption is that, in adverse times, power and authority need to be centralized at the top rather than decentralized, to enhance organizational resilience. This paper explores the effects of empowerment on organizational ¬¬resilience in an in-depth case study of a Dutch home care organization, in which employees are structurally empowered. The findings from this case study suggest that structural empowerment indeed positively affects organizational resilience, but that this effect is contingent upon a climate of psychological safety as well as top management’s sustained commitment to structural empowerment. We move beyond the extant conceptualization of psychological safety by demonstrating its inter-level nature in the context of structural empowerment, which operates across organizational levels when employees also engage in discussions on tactical and strategic issues. Overall, this study provides an in-depth understanding of how organizations can enhance their resilience by empowering their members, thus also challenging the common wisdom about centralizing power in adverse times.