'Toxic' approach to workplace resilience must be rethought, says ex-Twitter VP Bruce Daisley

He said resilience has become a “politicised” term.

"The interesting thing about resilience is that to some extent, it is a slightly toxic phrase,” he said.

"Resilience is this notion that when we get knocked down and get back up again. We might suffer a setback and we get up.”

He said his partner is Lebanese and when the Beirut port explosion happened following on from a national financial crisis, he saw at first-hand how angry local people were at descriptions of them in the international media as “resilient”.

"In the months before the Lebanese currency had collapsed and pretty much anyone who was Lebanese had lost all their money.

"People were really thinking, we just want the world to help reconstruct our destroyed city. When they read those articles they were really furious.

"The resilience word is a label that kind of says to people, whatever trauma you have experienced you had better get you back on your feet.

"If someone doesn’t get back on their feet, it almost gives you permission to say ‘well I knew they weren’t up to it’.”

He added: “I know the whole of modern society is constructed around what we as individuals can do and how can we adjust to be more productive.

"It is all about the focus on the individual.

"But anytime you see resilience, it doesn’t look like that at all.”

He cited the example of the collective resistance of Ukrainians fighting against the Russian invasion.

"Resilience really isn’t an individual trait, it is the strength we draw from each other.

"We have been misled on resilience.”

Mr Daisley cited research contained in a book called The Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton which explains how companies with good pay and conditions for their staff end up being more profitable than their rivals.

"She found you could correlate the working conditions of different companies with their profits.

"Organisations that had better working conditions and cultures grew more quickly, were more profitable and their stock price went up more.

"There are two things – there is a moral reason for creating good jobs for people but secondly there is an economic reason.

The book cites the example of a convenience store company called QuikTrip where staff are paid about 40 per cent above the average wage for their sector.

Mr Daisley said: “One of the senior vice presidents says the number one reason people will stay with QuikTrip is not the money, it is because the managers will do the same job they will do and we are all in this together.

"Most of us when we are thinking about our favourite workplace cultures and our favourite working dynamic, the sense we are all in it together is a really abiding thing.

"I think that gives an important lesson about the way work is evolving and changing.”