The Limits of Personal Resilience — And Why It’s Time to Build Organizational Resilience Instead
- 22 hours ago
- 4 min read
Workplace mental health was a key theme at this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, and a core focus was on personal resilience being included in the boardroom agenda. The idea is simple and compelling—if people can build stronger coping skills, they can better withstand pressure, adapt to change, and continue to perform.
Increasingly, we celebrate public examples of courage and resilience all the time: elite athletes like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, and Naomi Osaka, who have spoken openly about mental health struggles while performing at the highest levels. Their stories have helped reduce stigma and remind us that even the most accomplished individuals are still human.
At the same time, it’s important to examine where personal resilience actually comes from. As the World Economic Forum notes, “Resilience is about creating conditions that help people adapt to adversity.” Yet even the author of that piece, when describing their own organization’s personal resilience framework, pointed primarily to smart work tools, resources, and employee benefits—overlooking the deeper workplace systems that shape daily experience. Personal resilience matters. But it is not sufficient if organizations focus only on the “personal” side while leaving the systems in the workplace unchanged.
When Resilience Becomes Responsibility Shifting
When organizations overemphasize individual coping, resilience can quietly become a form of responsibility shifting. Burnout gets framed as a “time-management issue” rather than a workload problem. Stress-management workshops are offered as support, but the workplace factors that are contributing to or worsening employee mental health remain unaddressed.
Consider what it really means to “take care of yourself” in many modern workplaces. Employees may be encouraged to meditate, exercise, or set boundaries. Then they return to environments where performance ratings drop after taking a real vacation. Career progression can slow after needed mental health leave. Meanwhile, long hours and constant availability are what get rewarded. In these conditions, resilience starts to feel less like empowerment and more like endurance.
The burden shifts — subtly but decisively — from workplace systems to people. If an employee is struggling, the implicit message is that they need more grit, better coping skills, and more “brain capital.” Focusing on individual resilience alone misses the bigger picture that well-being is shaped by the broader systems at play. Organizational resilience is necessary to lay the foundation for employee well-being.
What the Data Actually Shows
If personal resilience were the solution, we would expect to see workplace mental health steadily improving as awareness of the issue grows. But the data tells a different story.
National polling from Mind Share Partners shows that the majority of employees report experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition at some point in their careers. Many employees point to workplace conditions — heavy workloads, long hours, emotionally draining work, limited flexibility and autonomy, and job insecurity — as major contributors impacting their mental health.
Despite growing conversation and investment in well-being initiatives, fear of career impact still keeps employees from speaking up, and half of managers report struggling to discuss mental health with their teams.
A recent review by McKinsey found resilience training as among the least effective workplace health interventions, and another meta-analysis by Deloitte found that organization-wide efforts for workplace mental health had nearly double the ROI, compared to interventions that focused on individuals. In other words, this isn’t a coping gap. It’s a work culture gap.
Rebalancing Responsibility: From Personal to Organizational Resilience
True commitment to workplace mental health goes beyond teaching individuals how to cope. Resilience should be something employees build within environments designed to support — not erode — their well-being. Until workplaces address the structural and cultural drivers of stress and burnout, calls for personal resilience remain incomplete and, for many, deeply insufficient.
If personal resilience is an individual’s capacity to adapt and recover, organizational resilience is a company’s capacity to create conditions where adaptation and recovery are possible in the first place.
It isn’t yoga classes during peak deadlines, a meditation app subscription layered on top of chronic overwork, or telling managers to “check in more” without giving them the skills and authority to truly support their teams.
Building organizational resilience begins with examining the systems, policies, and leadership behaviors that contribute to poor mental health. What this looks like will vary by organization, but a strong starting point is applying systems thinking to workplace mental health. We share more details on how to do this here. Another practical entry point is mapping the employee experience to identify the key moments that matter in supporting well-being—such as onboarding, performance reviews, promotions, leave, and team transitions. We also offer a worksheet to guide that process here.
By balancing personal and organizational responsibility, work can become a true force for good — a place where both people and performance thrive.
About the author
Bill Greene, Principal
Bill advises companies and leaders on building cultures that support workplace mental health. He facilitates Mind Share Partners’ trainings, leads strategic projects, and has partnered with organizations including Morrison Foerster, BlackRock, and Bhate.
Previously a management consultant specializing in employee communications and change management, Bill has guided global Fortune 500 companies across finance, manufacturing, high tech, retail, and pharma, as well as health care organizations and universities, through organizational and culture transformations.
