This morning, RSM hosted the Change Management Institute’s Christmas Breakfast at which Dr Robert Holmes, Consultant at RSM in Canberra, spoke on “Stress and resilience: Change management in organisations”.

Rob discussed what stress and resilience are, what our typical stress response is – nervous system speeds up, neocortex downregulated, emotions upgraded, freeze/flee or flight response decided - while avoiding too much neuroscience.

A favourite example is the Navy Stress Response Program (checking your reaction against a simple green, yellow, orange, red tool). Which using this theory, it has been found that 72% of people are resistant to traumatic events like 9-11 and most recover quickly, 18% will react but recover and 10% become traumatised. Not true for forests facing a Mt St Helens! 

We heard about the way organisations and environments affect individuals too. Exploring the costs to organisations, the risks and how we might mitigate them. As it turns out, how we perceive (psychologically) holds real keys to building resilience, as does knowing your resilience profile. The RSM consulting department work with these tools to roll them out to clients.

The breakfast was attended by 60 people from across a range of industries, they were treated to a great meal and hopefully walked away with a few tips on how to improve the management of stress and resilience in their organisations, particularly through times of change.

To find out more, contact you local RSM office today.