Demographic characteristics and career traits as predictors of employee resilience

Background Everyday challenges faced by employees at work have been constantly increasing. In order to maintain human sustainability and promote organisational performance, employees are required to demonstrate their resilience, that is, capacity to ‘bounce back’ from adversity and to handle and adapt to continually changing situations. Nonetheless, people’s responses to failure vary widely signalling the need to enable resilience. Objective The paper treats employee resilience as a developable capacity and argues that the behaviours that indicate this capacity are affected by numerous factors, including individual, familial and environmental. The current paper focuses on individual level predictors and aims to reveal whether and how demographic characteristics (gender, generation) and career traits (job tenure, sector type, sector (healthcare and wellness), and work as a calling vs job) shape employee resilience. Methods The study employed a non-probability purposive sampling approach. Quantitative data were collected during a survey in healthcare institutions and wellness centres in Lithuania. Data from 758 respondents were analysed using descriptive statistics and nonparametric inferential tests, such as the Mann–Whitney U test and the Kruskal–Wallis test. Results The findings revealed statistically significant differences ( p < 0.05) indicating that greater resilience was demonstrated by older male employees in the private sector, who were wellness industry workers with a 3- to 5-year job tenure. Conclusion From a human resource management perspective, the study contributes by identifying employee groups that may be more or less resilient, thereby suggesting targeted interventions to strengthen resilience.