Abstract

These are two caselets on Resilience Training. The first case is about Resilience training in Goldman Sachs. The investment bank started resilience training for its employees after it took a battering from the subprime crisis and allegations about its work culture, which resulted in low employee morale. To boost employee morale, the investment bank came out with a wellness mission and provided different wellness services to employees. The company also had in place a resilience strategy and disaster response. This started in Japan in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and later was extended across the globe. Being prepared helped the employees of Goldman Sachs face the Covid-19 successfully. The second case is about Google, which had wellness training in place, but resilience training was not a part of its regular training. The sudden onset of Covid-19 and the ensuing work from home made it difficult for the employees to adjust to a sudden change as they were caught unprepared. The George Floyd incident also impacted the employees adversely. Google then encouraged its employees to form themselves into groups and discuss issues related to diversity in the organization. Google then brought in experts from different fields like sports, combat, and entertainment and it made short videos about being resilient and what they had done to be resilient in the face of sudden changes and challenges. There were other videos which gave suggestions to employees on how they could make their lives better, and offered tips on different issues. Google also hosted virtual events on mental health and wellbeing. With the success of these programs, Google made resilience training a part of its regular training programs.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand what resilience is
• Examine the need for resilience at the workplace
• Analyze the importance of resilience training for organizations

Keywords

Resilience training; Goldman Sachs; Google; subprime crisis; employee morale; wellness mission; disaster response; resilience strategy; work from home; resilience at workplace; training and development