Resilience has traditionally been viewed as “an important way of coping”. Through resilience, “an individual recovers from or avoids negative outcomes from burdensome conditions” (Leipold and Greve, 2009). 

However, more recently, resilience has taken on a broader meaning – it can be “the capacity to thrive rather than just survive in high-stress environments” (Cleary et al, 2018). It is also a word sometimes misused by employers who expect staff to accept burdensome workloads with little support. 

“Resilience has gone from being talked about as a trait that is much needed by a few individuals who have experienced extreme trauma, to resilience being required by everyone to cope with everyday disruption,” says Rachel Lewis, a registered occupational psychologist, Managing Partner at Affinity Health at Work in London, and Reader at Birkbeck, University of London.