Weekly · Daily Terminal
There’s never a good time to be locked out of your business bank account, but the week before Christmas is probably one of the worst. When it happened to Ateria Health, a nutraceutical startup focused on improving the gut microbiome, the team’s resilience was put to the test. “It wasn’t just our bank account that was frozen but our employees’ and our suppliers’ accounts too.
No one could run payroll,” says CEO Neil Wickers. The issue took several days to resolve, and he admits it was difficult not to panic. “But I think you’ve got to be authentic as a leader and I told people I was finding it tough.
In a startup, there are great days when things are going fantastically well but there are also days when things go wrong. In order to survive, you need people to embrace that, roll up their sleeves and get on with it.” Resilience is a skill that’s highly prized by businesses across all industries. In its Future of Jobs survey 2025 , the World Economic Forum found resilience will become one of the top core skills needed by 2030, second only to analytical thinking.
More recently, a study into the skills employers want from young people in the age of AI put curiosity, resilience and the ability to connect with people at the top of the wishlist. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this call for resilience comes at a time when businesses are under more pressure than ever before. Geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions, skill gaps and economic strain are challenging even the most secure organisations.
Work-related mental health illness is also on the rise – 964,000 workers suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2024-5 according to the government’s latest labour force survey , a sharp increase from 776,000 in the previous year. Deloitte research published in 2024 estimated poor mental health costs UK employers £51bn a year. It’s an urgent issue that needs to be addressed, but many firms still aren’t taking action.
Last year, a major six-year study of more than 1,000 companies in the Midlands by the world-renowned Enterprise Research Centre (ERC), based at Warwick Business School (WBS), found that the number of firms offering initiatives that support workplace mental health has fallen to the lowest level since before the Covid-19 pandemic, despite employers’ growing concern about the effect ongoing sickness absence, presenteeism, and low productivity are having on operations. Steve Roper, director of the Enterprise Research Centre. Photograph: Samuel Kirby/Warwick Business School “There’s a big gap between rhetoric and reality,” says Stephen Roper, ERC director and the study’s principal investigator.
The study, which also set international benchmarks with a similar number of companies interviewed in Ireland and Sweden, found that while three-quarters of UK firms say they have a responsibility to support employee mental health, only 50% have any initiatives in place. Approximately 20% of firms have no plans to introduce mental health support at all. This is becoming an urgent issue that businesses of all sizes need to address, Roper adds.
While organisations may argue they don’t have the budget to spend on wellbeing initiatives, “my takeaway is we talk a lot about investing in skills training, equipment and business systems to support productivity, but none of that is going to matter if the person sitting at that desk is feeling rubbish. Wellbeing at work is not a peripheral issue. If we don’t get this right, it undermines everything else.” It’s not just about hiring people with more resilience either, says Laura Chamberlain, a professor of marketing at WBS and author of Brilliantly Bouncy , a book about positive resilience.
Instead, resilience is a process that should be built proactively, every day, as a team. “The issue is not whether your people have resilience,” she says. “The issue is what conditions you’re creating for it to develop.
The irony is that a lot of organisations hire for resilience but the way they operate actually destroys it.” Prof Laura Chamberlain. Photograph: Martin Neeves Photography Ltd Initiatives don’t have to be high-cost, Roper says. The ERC’s study found that among those businesses taking action, small measures such as appointing mental health first aiders, running mental health training for line managers, and employee monitoring and engagement surveys can all help.
Even wellbeing initiatives such as gym discounts and free fruit in the office can be positive changes. For Chamberlain, “understanding that resilience building is built in good times, not a crisis, and should be embedded in everyday working practice” is a good place to start. She recommends focusing on building employee strengths, rather than fixing weaknesses so that everyone feels empowered to make a difference.
“That lays a positive foundation and utilises the strengths that already exist in the team,” she says. “It’s also really important for leaders to model good behaviour such as maintaining a good work-life balance, and making resilience part of the conversation. It should be something we talk about building openly, not something we endure privately as a lone sport.” Wickers, an MBA graduate from WBS in the late 1980s, has had a successful career working in leadership positions at Unilever, Pizza Express and Carluccio’s.
At Ateria Health, he starts from the position that employee wellbeing is paramount. “People can only perform well if they’re in a good place themselves,” he says. Rather than values, the startup talks about behaviours, prioritising openness, honesty and trust.
The team works flexibly, with performance judged on output rather than time at a desk, and team members are encouraged to share what they’re proudest of from the previous week at the start of team meetings. It’s important that leaders set the tone and create an environment where people can speak up. Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images He agrees that leaders set the tone.
“Showing your own vulnerabilities can have a really positive impact. It gives people in the team permission to also speak up, without having to feel they’ve got to cope by themselves.” He adds that he tries to create as much positive energy as possible, “but we also get the difficult issues on the table and talk about the stuff that hasn’t worked, or the balls we’ve dropped. Everyone works together to help fix those things or grab those opportunities.
That’s how we operate as a team.” Discover more insights at Warwick Business School
Source: The Guardian
