CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORIES
Delivering Foundational Resilience Tools to Address Stress and Burnout
Global retailer and e-commerce company
The Challenge
The learning and development team at this large, global retail company provides programs to a diverse population of employees across their corporate and retail teams. As with most companies during the pandemic, they noticed increasing levels of stress, overwhelm, and languishing among their employees. As plans for a return to the office began to materialize, the team noticed heightened levels of concern due to the uncertain environment ahead.
“Meeting-free Fridays” and other tactics had been implemented. Available courses of action were also reviewed as there were clear opportunities to address resilience and improve the general managerial offerings for middle managers. Further, there was a bothersome trend of participants registering yet not showing up to actual sessions, and concerns about “Zoom fatigue” and how pre-work might exacerbate the situation.
How YOL Responded
YOL worked with the company to design a custom 4-week virtual version of its Foundations of Resilience program for senior managers to senior directors with an initial pilot group of 25. The structure of the program leaned heavily on experiential practices, real world applications tailored to the company’s culture, and interactive discussion. Each participant would also be matched with a “resilience buddy” so they could help support each other throughout the program.
- Participants were coached through the development of 30/60/90-day personal resilience plans and taught over 30 YOL “resilience boosters” to practice and rely on during times of stress and unease.
- A companion Microsoft Teams channel was set up to enable asynchronous communication between students in between sessions and provide a repository to house class materials, video-based guided meditations from YOL facilitators, and other tools.
- The company’s learning and development team also worked with the YOL operations team to customize additional communications materials, finalize impact measurement criteria, and develop technical contingency plans.
The Results
The program was an overwhelming success, both in terms of impact and attendance/engagement.
Now feel confident in the ability to perform their best, even with uncertain conditions.
Now feel they are equipped with tools and resources to manage challenge in their lives.
Agreed the sessions provided actionable items to apply to their job.
Nearly all participants attended and engaged
(4-week program; 75-minute sessions)
Epilogue
Since the initial pilot, the company expanded the YOL Foundations of Resilience program to three more cohorts of senior managers-senior directors, added four cohorts of Resilience workshops for individual contributors, and a Mindful Movement and Somatic Strategies program for all, in just the first year of engagement, with plans to scale further in year two.
