BY: Tianne Croshaw | January 16, 2024

I’m excited to share two fascinating case studies that showcase the power of the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI), a resilience assessment developed by Mind Matters. This real-world evidence (RWE) illustrates how my company – Resilience Wellbeing Partnership (RWP) – has harnessed the PRI to deliver tailored, bespoke training to our organizational clients, equipping them with the resilience they need to thrive in these truly challenging times.

Stress and resilience in 2023 (and beyond): an overview
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I want to start this piece by taking a closer look at the cultural backdrop for businesses in 2023 and beyond. It’s no secret that the past few years have presented profound challenges which have significantly impacted individual, team and organisational resilience.

Taking a moment’s pause to consider the current business landscape really does put into perspective the successful increase in resilience levels for two of my corporate clients – enabled by the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) – that I share later in this article.

We are always living in changing and challenging times. However, recent studies have highlighted the concerning rise in workplace absenteeism, with stress emerging as a significant contributor, exacerbated by the turbulence of the last few years.

In 2023, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) report, based on data from over 900 companies employing 6.5 million staff, found that employees took an average of 7.8 absence days per year in the UK.

Not only was stress a top cause of short-term absenteeism, but it was also a significant driver of long-term absences. This data underscores a critical challenge faced by organisations today: ensuring the well-being and resilience of their workforce in difficult times.

I have long advocated for the importance of addressing this challenge head-on by naming the issue (stress!) and the importance of appropriate preventative rather than reactive approaches. My approach has always included education around the biology of stress, workshops to enhance communication skills and cultural change, as well as one-to-one coaching to address specific individuals’ development needs.

A commitment to sharing the tools of resilience is a huge personal driver for me in all I do. Moving forward, the key to sustainable organisational performance lies in a data-driven, evidence-based approach that delivers tangible results that organisations can measure.

And that’s where the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) comes into play.

The Personal Resilience Indicator: a scientific approach to measuring resilience

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For me, the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI), created by the incredible team at Mind Matters, represents a significant leap in resilience measurement. Grounded in over 30 years of neuroscience and psychology research, it offers a solid scientific foundation for assessing and enhancing individual, team and organisational resilience.

It is designed to measure the resilience of individuals, teams, departments, and entire organisations, providing a real-time overview of their strengths and areas for development.

Distinct from traditional methods, it’s underpinned by a robust scientific body of evidence, offering a deep and multifaceted understanding of resilience. The PRI examines six essential domains of resilience: Health, Purpose, Problem Solving, Perseverance, Composure, and Relationships. Within each domain, two drivers are examined, allowing for a granular understanding of an individual’s or team’s resilience profile and providing a comprehensive view missing in other resilience assessments.

Understanding the science behind the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) is the key to appreciating its effectiveness. At its core, the PRI is grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, making it a scientifically robust tool for measuring resilience. This scientific foundation ensures that the PRI is not just another subjective assessment but a reliable and valid measure of an individual’s and a team’s or organisation’s collective resilience capacity.

In essence, the scientific underpinning of the PRI sets it apart from other resilience tools. Its comprehensive, evidence-based approach provides a solid foundation for individuals and organisations to effectively understand, measure, and enhance their resilience. By leveraging the latest in neuroscience and psychology, the PRI offers a unique and powerful lens through which resilience can be understood and cultivated at both individual and organisational levels.

Demonstrating a clear return on investment (ROI) from resilience and well-being programmes is now more crucial than ever for financial directors, leaders, and HR executives. More and more, I’m seeing that in today’s fast-paced, data-driven business environment, organisations are under increasing pressure to justify every investment they make.

Historically, this has been a challenge when it comes to well-being initiatives. While the value of employee well-being is almost universally acknowledged, quantifying its direct impact on the bottom line has been frustratingly elusive. Many organisations have invested in well-being programmes with a genuine desire to enhance their employees’ quality of life. However, the lack of a comprehensive measurement tool – such as the PRI – made it difficult to report on the real, measurable improvements these initiatives were bringing.

As a result, the value of such programmes, while acknowledged anecdotally, often remained intangible and challenging to demonstrate in concrete financial terms. The PRI has changed the game for myself and many others in the resilience space, providing a reliable and comprehensive method for measuring the effectiveness of our offering and demonstrating the tangible ROI, finally aligning the interests of employees’ wellbeing and an organisation’s bottom line success.

The PRI in Action: Case Studies from the Resilience Wellbeing Partnership
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Case Study 1: Developing bespoke resilience solutions based on PRI results

Company 1, a long-standing partner of RWP, sought to boost the resilience of its senior leadership team and managers, particularly in response to the challenges brought about by the global pandemic. With a senior leader deeply committed to resilience and its transformative potential, I could immediately see there was an opportunity to make a lasting impact.

As a certified PRI Practitioner, I offered to scientifically measure the resilience of the senior leadership team and managers. Senior leaders are often keen to have measurements in place and by taking a PRI prior to any training being offered or delivered, I’m able to get an accurate picture as to what unique challenges and needs each organisation has.

With this particular company, we began with individual PRI assessments to take the pulse of the organisation and inform our next steps.

I find the beauty of the PRI tool is not just in measuring but also in how it facilitates dialogue and the sharing of best practices. In a follow-up debrief session with the team, each person received their in-depth resilience report, highlighting their strengths and development areas within the six resilience domains. I then shared some of our resilience toolkit and, most importantly, presented the team’s collective resilience results. This session was a fantastic springboard for deeper discussions and collaboration with the leadership team.

Crucially, we celebrated their strengths and recognised where the report revealed best practice, ensuring that we really explored what they were doing well and how they may share this best practice with the wider organisation.

We also looked into the areas where resilience was lower and ensured that these became focal points for the bespoke training programme I went away to develop. Having identified the need for support in the Sleep, Purpose and Relationship domains, I brought in carefully selected RWP specialists to address specific domains that had been highlighted as development areas, tapping into their expertise. For instance, Dr. Sian Rowsell addressed sleep and its impact on resilience. Neil Fache, a 19-time world champion cyclist, shared his inspiring insights on Purpose and Perseverance. We also drew on my specialisation in Composure and Relationships.

Post-training measurements revealed significant improvements in both the individual and team’s resilience levels across all of the target domains, and it has been fascinating to see the impact of this individualised, tailored approach. The graphic shows the individual scores for one programme participant. Notable is not just the overall increase in Resilience, but in particular the Sleep domain, which improved by an incredible 43% by the end of the programme.

It was equally fascinating to notice the impact of senior management engagement, buy-in, and enthusiasm levels on the team’s post-training scores. For instance, one senior manager fully embraced the programme and advocated for further follow-up training, while another remained sceptical and disengaged.

This contrast in mindset and engagement had a profound effect on their teams: while the first manager’s team actively participated in the training, the latter’s team showed limited enthusiasm and lower attendance of the workshops. The results spoke volumes. The engaged senior manager saw their team’s resilience scores improve significantly, and this was pivotal in making theirs one of the most impressive transformations I’ve witnessed.

Case Study 2: Measuring ROI with the PRI

“The improvements in our resilience aren’t just a feeling, but a tangible reality…”

Another client case study offers a different perspective on the possibilities the PRI can create for organisations.

Many of you reading this may possibly relate: One of the most frequent questions I face about resilience when talking to senior leaders, HR professionals, and, of course, the finance departments of organisations is about return on investment (ROI). How can we measure the tangible impact of their investment in a corporate resilience or well-being programme? 

It’s an excellent question, and prior to learning about Mind Matters, like most training providers, I had to admit that they cannot. Naturally, I explored what it would take to create a valid and reliable tool to measure resilience. The years of work and research required were just not feasible for my company, so it was very timely for me to discover Mind Matters and learn of their approach.

For company 2, I worked with their management team and its senior leader. The senior leader, another strong advocate for workplace well-being and resilience, was eager to measure the data coming back from the PRI, so we went ahead and asked the team to complete their individual questionnaires.

Each manager then participated in three individual coaching sessions and four half-day workshops. Again, the PRI was pivotal in assessing their resilience levels before and after the programme. The post-workshop measurements revealed significant improvements in resilience levels, including changes in behaviour and communication, underscoring the programme’s success.

What was most interesting for me was that the senior leader had begun to witness the behavioural changes in the team and was able to experience the programme’s positive impact on her team. However, when she saw the actual data, the improvements became much more tangible to her, and this helped her to see that the changes weren’t just a ‘feeling’ but a demonstrable reality.

The Future of Resilience Measurement with PRI
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These success stories with the PRI tool have been inspiring for all of us at RWP, and it’s been equally exciting to see the results with our clients. For me personally, they’ve illustrated the profound impact of data-driven, evidence-based resilience programmes.

In the future, we’re determined to measure resilience not just before and after programmes but also during. This additional measurement at the mid-point will ensure that we stay on track with our objectives and enable us to make any necessary adjustments to our approach. It’s a step that enhances our agility, adaptability and, ultimately, our resilience.

The PRI offers us immense flexibility that we’ve yet to fully exploit. We can use it as a standard to measure resilience at multiple levels, whether it’s entire organisations, departments, or individuals. But it also allows us to slice and dice the data in various ways, such as looking at resilience levels for management versus employees or comparing different demographics, including those on shift work patterns or those working from home versus office workers. The possibilities are (almost) endless, and we are just at the start.

The way forward
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As we look to the future, we’re excited about the many possibilities that the PRI opens up for us to further refine the services to our clients. In a strategic shift, we’ve brought the PRI front and centre on our website, and we’re determined to quickly implement our next measure of resilience before, during, and after our training programmes, making it an integral part of our offering.

In a world where workplace resilience and wellbeing are increasingly non-negotiable, the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) represents the right balance between nurturing the ‘human’ element within organisations while providing a solid, evidence-based foundation to demonstrate a tangible return on investment.

The case studies I’ve shared here provide evidence of the PRI’s place in measuring and driving greater resilience in organisations and underscore the importance of targeted bespoke programmes in creating sustainable change. And as previously mentioned, the introduction of a measurement ‘during’ training will offer us an opportunity to review, adjust and pivot if needed, keeping us on track and aligned with our goals in real-time.

For RWP, integrating the PRI in our work with organisational clients enabled a measurable win-win where organisations and their employees reap the benefits of a more resilient and thriving workplace underpinned by that all-important scientific approach to measure, analyse, and enhance resilience.