Stress resilience: researching a key competence for professionals in communication management
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Submitted version
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3088889Utgivelsesdato
2021Metadata
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- Scientific articles [2189]
Sammendrag
Abstract
Purpose - Nowadays, communication practitioners are well-equipped with all kinds of skills and competencies.
Nevertheless, those capabilities seem not to prevent professionals from stress and burnout.
Stress resilience, i.e., the ability to deal with high demands at work, to cope with and recover from
stress, seems to be a missing competence. This study sheds light on this important, but barely discussed
aspect of communication management.
Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative approach was applied to understand sources of stress
and to identify opportunities to build stress resilience competence. Therefore, 40 in-depth interviews
with senior leaders and young professionals in 30 agencies in the largest countries on two continents
were conducted (United States vs. Germany).
Findings - This study revealed common and threatful drivers of stress. Overall, the work environment
can be summarised as highly demanding and multifaceted, where stress resilience might be a useful
competence to have to be successful and to be protected against negative stress outcomes such as
burnout. The study identifies several reasons why resilient professionals are more successful in coping
with stress. It is further shown that most communication agencies in the sample have already implemented
programmes to increase employees’ resilience.
Originality - This study offers an alternative view on the much-debated future of work by using an
interdisciplinary approach and large-scale, qualitative insights from the agency environment. A novel
concept is introduced that can stimulate further research.