Psychological Capital - What does this mean for HR?

Traditionally organisations were solely focused on building financial capital, which was then extended to an awareness of the need to build and strengthen their human capital. Within the latter, increased attention is now placed on the importance of investing in employees’ psychological capital and the business benefits that can then flow.

Given we spend a significant portion of our lives at work, it is good news that research shows the work we undertake can represent a much needed source of purposeful activity and meaningful relationships, key ingredients in human flourishing.

However, there also remain many risks to our well-being, as evidenced by the 2018 CIPD survey on health and well-being in the workplace, which reported that stress related absence had increased alongside increased reporting of common mental health conditions.

This workshop will highlight the current research on how employees and employers can take steps to build psychological capital within their organisations, helping to alleviate many of the contributory factors to stress and create lasting improvements in their employees’ well-being.

We will provide practical tools and tips to how you can build psychological capital through the HERO model:

• Hope - an essential component in nurturing the human spirit, carries deep within its core a belief that things will always change for the better, no matter how awful or uncertain.
• Self-Efficacy – which is concerned with our belief in our abilities to successfully achieve what we set out to, basically how confident are we that we will succeed in a specific task. High levels of self-efficacy have a major impact on our intention to take on challenging goals and commit to putting in the effort to achieve them.
• Resilience - commonly understood to refer to our ability to bounce-back AND BEYOND from adversity and emerge stronger from having overcome such events.
• Optimism - best explained as individuals adopting an attribution style that explains positive life events through personal and permanent causes, and negative events through external and temporary causes.

Research has consistently shown that each of these contributory factors can be increased and following this workshop you’ll be able to start investing time and effort in building your own psychological capital and/or those you work with!