Ep #33: Creating an Organizational Resilience Framework: A Guide to Maximizing Your Investment in People

For the first two installments of this series, check out:

In today's challenging business environment, organizational resilience isn't just a buzzword—it's a critical component of long-term success. As companies shift away from traditional perks like happy hours and bowling nights toward more transformational solutions, understanding the return on investment becomes crucial.

The True Cost of Employee Turnover

When we examine the numbers, the cost of replacing an employee typically amounts to 150% of their annual salary. For example, replacing a professional earning $100,000 annually could cost your organization $150,000. This calculation alone makes a compelling case for investing in retention-focused resilience programs.

Beyond Traditional Metrics

While retention is easily measurable, organizational resilience programs deliver value across multiple dimensions:

Tangible Benefits:

Reduced sick days and improved attendance rates across the organization
Measurable improvements in profit margins and operational efficiency
Significant decrease in both absenteeism and presenteeism among staff
Higher employee retention rates leading to reduced recruitment costs

Intangible Benefits:

Enhanced communication skills fostering better team collaboration
Improved stress management capabilities leading to higher productivity
Increased employee confidence resulting in better decision-making
Better coping mechanisms for challenging situations and workplace changes

Measuring Success

One mid-sized accounting firm invested $100,000 in organizational resilience initiatives for 2024. While they saw positive results through word-of-mouth feedback and attendance rates, they hadn't implemented comprehensive measurement systems. This highlights a common oversight: failing to track specific metrics that demonstrate program value.

Three Steps to Implementing an Organizational Resilience Framework

1. Establish Clear Parameters

Finalize your budget allocation before launching any initiatives
Set intentional, measurable goals that align with organizational objectives
Align financial investment with expected outcomes and track progress consistently

2. Develop a Strategic Plan

Address top priorities based on organizational needs assessment
Make key decisions about program scope and implementation timeline
Choose between broad impact (going wide) or depth of intervention (going deep)

3. Secure Expert Support

Bring in qualified professionals with proven track records
Ensure proper program execution through regular monitoring
Transform uncertainty into predictable results with expert guidance

Building organizational resilience framework requires more than just good intentions—it demands strategic planning, careful implementation, and consistent measurement. By following these guidelines and investing in transformational solutions, organizations can create lasting change that benefits both their bottom line and their people.

Wrapping Up

Organizational resilience isn't just about making people feel good – it's about protecting your bottom line while building a sustainable, thriving workplace. The companies that understand this aren't just creating better places to work; they're creating more profitable, sustainable businesses.

Ready to take the next step? I'd love to help you build a customized organizational resilience framework for your company. Visit the Contact page and let's discuss how we can work together.

Want the full series? Click to read the 3-part Organizational Resilience series I recently wrote for Thomson Reuters.

Hey! Have you subscribed to my weekly newsletter? It’s for high-achieving women in accounting, finance, law, and consulting who want to strengthen organizational resilience—both personally and within their teams. Each week, I share practical strategies to prevent burnout, enhance well-being, and build a sustainable, thriving career. Subscribe here.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

How to measure the ROI of organizational resilience programs
The true cost of employee turnover and retention benefits
Three essential steps to implement successful resilience initiatives
Why transformational solutions outperform transactional benefits

Watch The Full Episode:

Full Episode Transcript:

00:00:00	we are getting started welcome welcome it is Tuesday November 6th it is Tuesday November 6th episode 32 is about to kick off welcome to billable hour burnout we are talking about organizational resilience today this is the third and final part of our three-part series welcome to billable hour burnout if you need helpful tactical advice that actually helps you have the career of your dreams without the stress or the overwhelm you are in the right place if you want to finally enjoy the life the career that you've

00:00:32	spent decades building you are in the right place if you find yourself here today it means you're ready to experience more balance more ease more confidence and you're ready to make it happen without having to quit your job or burn down your life my name is Lauren Baptist I'm your big four auditor and Regulatory tax consultant turned life coach and you're listening to billable hour burnout on the show I share simple tactics and mindset strategies specifically to the Modern Woman in accounting Finance Consulting and law

00:01:05	you ready episode 32 all right everybody I feel like I need to address the elephant in the room because I am on social media and it's heavy the energy is heavy and while there are a lot of people that are happy there are a lot of people that are not happy and I'm here today just to remind you to take a deep breath to focus on you to focus on what you have control over um it would have actually been a perfectly timed episode to talk about this but I'm just going to take a moment and share you have more control than you

00:01:36	think you have control over your words you have control over your actions you have control over your thoughts and when you take control of what you have control of you'd be surprised by how much power you truly have so I'm going to leave that there today I know that a lot of people are not feeling so good and I understand that and that's where I'm here to hold space I get that right this is a time where we're feeling a lot of stress my clients were messaging me this week and last night saying they

00:02:05	were feeling it and I get it I get it you might be feeling it and if you're feeling it right now um you know I have been just exploring what I need to feel full in my cup and so for me right now it's been going outside and taking walks taking deep breaths I'm lucky with where I am today that the weather is beautiful so I will be going outside there's even subtle things we can be doing right are we drinking enough water are we giving ourselves um breaks from social media right can we pull ourselves

00:02:36	away from the screens for a little bit some of us love to invest our energy in our work so whatever you need to cope I just invite you to do it from a healthy place and if you're scratching for ideas let me know all right I have good news so let's let's talk about that I have good news the good news is I'm doing a webinar next week so make sure you mark your calendars a April November 12th next Tuesday at 1: p.m. Eastern I am teaching how to get a promotion six steps to get a promotion without burnout so make sure

00:03:12	you register this will be recorded for replay so make sure that you get access to it all right we are here to talk organizational resilience we've talked about it over the past two episodes and this is the third and final part Oran gational resilience if you're just chiming in it's the way that we cope with hard moments like this one right what happens to our economy what happens to our Market what happens to our people right we can feel the palpable energy and so even what I just shared about like post elction we're

00:03:48	feeling that in our colleagues right some colleagues are really happy some colleagues are really stressed how do we as the leader show up with regardless of however we feel available for our people because when we're burned out we're going to shut down shut out we're going to be um less compassionate and when we think about organizational resilience it's about cultivating a culture of resilience that can be knocked down and get back up that can manage hard things and not have it take a toll or create

00:04:20	scarring this is what organizational resilience is and so a couple weeks ago I was talking to somebody in a midsized accounting firm who was telling me that they invested in organizational resilience who had spent over $100,000 on their initiatives in 2024 and that while it's all been successful for them they really weren't sure what to do for 2025 and so when they pulled me in I asked them well tell me like what are the metrics what's the ROI what have you seen as benefits and he kind of stood there in shock of like we haven't

00:04:53	been tracking anything we've just been doing and the only thing we've been measuring is word of mouth and attendance lists now if this is you you're not alone if you've invested and like you're moving away from the transactional things like the happy hours and the bowling nights and you're focusing on the transformational activities that really boost your people know you're moving in the right direction but today's our uh today's episode is all about the ROI the return on your investment that you can

00:05:22	expect when you intentionally invest in these transformational Solutions so I wanted to take time to talk about that today now I believe this was discussed in last week's episode this idea of yeah absolutely it was discussed it was this idea of taking from our hiring budgets and reallocating to our retention budgets knowing that this keeps it it all is for the greater good of our personnel and keeping the best staff and the best talent and making sure we're pulling in the new best talent so that's one way to think about

00:05:59	it right if we did that reallocation the math on that is easy I say that it's easy because when we think about a return on investment right it's like if I put $1 here I hope to get one at least $1 back for it to be worth my time energy so if we're putting let's say 100K into an organizational resilience program like this colleague I spoke to did what should they expect is it just that they feel good and that the attendance is steady or is it that they retain people is it that they experience improvements in job

00:06:38	satisfaction lower attrition or an ability to handle you know hard things better that's what we want to start seeing an Roi on and we can measure that in different ways but I want you to like I think the easiest number thing to think about when we're like okay how do we build an Roi for our company if I take 100K and I allocate it into retention of our people then the hope is that then that number goes down or somebody who was about to leave stays because they feel supported so I done over the past year

00:07:09	I've worked within several companies and I've helped them build out these programs to create organizational resilience so when we talk about these transformational exper uh transformational Solutions it can look like surveys it could look like group programs one on-one uh it could also look like um assessments Keynotes I'm getting some distractions from Instagram over here on my side so if uh anyway I'm just laughing as I'm sharing but uh there are so many things that we could think about that can

00:07:43	Encompass programming that is for the greater good so we have to start first there by thinking what are we investing in and I think we've talked about this a little bit in the first episode but I want you to really be thinking about that okay now I know with this 100K let's say we take that 100K that my colleague came to me with and we're going to put it into a program I have been working in companies facilitating programs like this and what you can see is Roi not just on the on one level retention that one's easy to calculate

00:08:16	but what takes more um Precision to calculate which I do with these companies that I work with is measuring the things that feel less tangible so yeah we can the the just so you some of the obvious metrics besides retention is reduced sick days um improved margins and that's where like as we're looking at that right seeing a direct like show of how this work can be on your p&l right this is what we're talking about but when we think about the things that the employee would benefit from presentism um and hoping that there is a

00:08:53	uh there is less presenteeism that there's less absenteeism so the idea of presenteeism is just sitting at your computer like not fully present but just doing the thing absenteeism is like being out of office more so we can measure that but it starts to get more subtle when we think about better communication skills better stress management skills higher confidence these are also valuable indicators of stress and if we are not measuring them then we are doing ourselves a disservice when we spend this kind of money so I

00:09:25	want you to be thinking about how you can actually get an Roi that goes beyond just retention again if retention is the win we talked about it last session that the cost of of someone leaving is about 150% of their salary their annual salary so if we're like okay I was paying a person 100K that means it costs 150k to replace them and so if I save one person by investing 100K in these retention programs it's a win right it's already a 50k savings I know I have a number of people here so I can you're keeping up with me but I

00:10:03	know you can see how this has that tangible effect but I want you to be thinking about how it can affect not just the company but also the employee and when you focus on these programs and these um I should even say these surveys these assessments to help measure you can see why this is a win it no longer is just a nice to have we start to see there's Improvement so one of of the um one of the firms that I worked with they said that they felt the majority of the coping skills of their people improved just by in

00:10:38	investing in the program that they did with me they were more equipped to better handle the tools of of hard things right they became a more resilient organization because of the program I facilitated in their company and so they noticed that people felt like they had more control even when they felt uh faced with hardships and challenges I actually even reached out to one of the employees last week because she had been going through a journey in that thre month program and I was just like hey how are things going noted this is

00:11:11	like a week before the election this is before you know this is months after the program and she's like I'm great I feel like I am making moves in the company I feel like I have control I'm doing really well and so this is what I love to hear we hear that the employee stays the employee is Happy the employees benefiting and so is everybody else so when you think about these programs you have to be thinking of okay how do I make sure that this is a financial win for me this is the work that I do when I'm not coaching right so

00:11:43	I do my coaching work working with women oneon-one and then I also do this other work in Consulting because as someone who burned out ended up an emergency room I feel empowered to go really specific and help the leaders that have that ripple effect but I also feel empowered to support the organ organizations and the employees that need that support so I want you to think about really like if you're investing in any type of organizational resilience programming is what do I expect to get from this we talked about goals earlier

00:12:13	on but now how do we make this feel like a monetary win so if in the first year it was Break Even is that a win I would say yes to be honest because we see some times uh when we make investments there's no it's just loss right I paid for the bowling alley event and that's 10 grand out my pocket versus I'm like really focused on keeping one employee I'm really focused on reducing sick days I'm really focused on making people um feel more like they have more autonomy in their dayto day these are the things

00:12:46	that I can and when I say I as the company we can improve upon for you and your office so what you need to do now three simple steps you need to make organizational resilience your company's priority and reality and here's how you could do it now that you've listened to all three episodes you can finalize your budgets and your intentional goals you need to have that first and foremost because otherwise you're just building the plane as it's flying and that doesn't always work especially for something like this you need to be

00:13:20	really clear on how much you can spend how much you're willing to ins spend and invest and then what goals you want and marry that if you have a very small budget you have to be maybe pick one goal and not three so you have to like you have to nail that down in order to start building that organizational resilience you're looking for so once you have your budget and your goals it moves to step two is building out a strategic plan this is where we are addressing the top priorities and incorporating the key decisions that we

00:13:49	talked about in last week whether it's going wide or going deep mindset tactics etc etc so I want you to be thinking about okay now that I know what how much money I have to invest what my goals are I'm going to build the plan to make it happen and step three get the support you need to make this an actually successful program don't feel like you have to do it on your own from the side of your desk yes it is an expense to bring someone in but to do it right goes from I'm gambling this money and hoping

00:14:23	that it will work to this will work because do you feel the difference all right so that's what we need to do finalize your budget and your goals build a strategic plan get the support you need to get the ROI that your company deserves this is what you can expect I have a lot more information I can always share but I love even could have pulled it up for today but I went a different program I did a three-month program focused on um women leaders in a finance department actually was a women all women in their finance department and in

00:14:59	that program we were able to measure improvements on confidence time management Stress Management coping these are the skills that create organizational resilience and what I love so much about that program specifically is that they really wanted to improve on the employee skill sets not necessarily just the margin because they knew it had long-term benefit so there's are so many wins uh we could talk about Roi all day I have numbers to back it if you're ever like Curious or you know you're looking to bring this

00:15:28	into your company because I don't want Wellness to be a thing that people think is just a nice to have organizational resilience is a critical component of how your organization does business today and how they will do business for the next 5 10 and 50 years so if you're thinking of sticking around for a while this is not something you can pass up on and I invite you to take that first step with me so this wraps up today's episode as you're thinking about organizational resilience this comes to the conclusion

00:16:00	of our three-part series make sure you re-watch any of those episodes if you didn't get a chance focusing on the problem and the solution the process that I walk you through and the results you can expect now I know we love making things better for our company but what I say is It's always important that you put your oxygen mask on first so if you are looking for a promotion next year I invite you to join me for my upcoming webinar on Tuesday November 12th at 1 p.m Eastern what I'll be showing you is

00:16:29	the six-step process that has my clients this is the CL the advanced strategies that I share with my clients that I'm sharing with you because I want more higher paid women higher ranking women happier women more balanced women and the webinar is called six steps to get a promotion without burnout I'm not just telling you what you need to get the promotion I'm telling you what you need to have a life where you are promoted and you get what you deserve from a money perspective a title perspective a

00:16:58	corner office perspective but also doing it in a way where you can have balance free time on your weekends cozy mornings um with a cup of coffee before you start your workday time at the end of the day to decompress everything that happened it's possible I know it is because I see it happening to my clients every day so I invite you to join me you can register in the comments to this wherever you're watching this you could go to my bio wherever you're seeing this my profile and you can register for the webinar

00:17:27	there or you could just message me all right everybody thank you for listening to today's episode last thing I'm actually remembering right I've mentioned that November has a special opportunity for my my newsletter audience this is your chance so I have not pushed that out yet it is coming out very soon so make sure you're on my newsletter if you're not on my newsletter already all right everybody thanks for listening to the episode if you like it let me know what you think if you want more of it if you have

00:17:57	questions if you have ideas if you want to hear me talk on a specific topic let me know I'm here for you this is why I do this for you uh so stay in touch find me on Instagram Facebook YouTube and Linkedin at Lauren Baptist thank you for listening if you want to learn more about me my program akaloa Wellness or even my consulting services to build organizational resilience in your firm visit akaloa wellness.com a c h l a wellness spelled out.com all right everybody another episode in the books I had so much fun

00:18:31	sharing with you today and I just realized this is me we're in episode 33 not 32 so if I said 32 we have are on episode 33 all right everybody I'll see you next week