Back in the early days of COVID-19, when businesses were scrambling to reinvent how they operated, HR analyst Josh Bersin introduced a concept he called “Resilient HR.” He argued that the pandemic was forcing organizations to evolve beyond a “responsive HR” model (efficient but reactive and brittle in the face of volatility and uncertainty) into one that was more adaptive, distributed, and cross-functional. “Now, rather than building organizations that are efficient, highly aligned, and scaleable [sic] – we need to build organizations that are fast, adaptive, and easy to change,” he wrote back then.
At the time, the idea represented a fairly radical change in thought process. Five years later, many leaders have quietly moved on, assuming those lessons belonged to a once-in-a-century crisis. But here’s the truth: resilience isn’t just for pandemics. It’s essential whenever volatility and uncertainty define the business landscape. Which is to say: always.
HR resilience is the ability of an organization's HR function to adapt quickly to disruption. This means maintaining compliance, supporting employees, and sustaining business continuity despite external challenges. It combines strategic foresight, flexible systems, and a culture prepared to respond to change.
“Resilience is not something to reach for after adversity,” Lisa Lounsbury, a resilience and well-being expert at New Day Wellness, told the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) this past summer. “It’s something to build ahead of time, brick by brick, through daily habits and intentional self-leadership.”
Building HR resilience starts with shifting from efficiency to adaptability. A resilient HR organization anticipates disruptions, balances operational stability with flexibility, and prepares both leaders and employees to navigate uncertainty.
In other words, resilience needs to be baked into any HR strategy from the start.
From talent shortages and skills mismatches to changing HR compliance requirements and growing workforce burnout, HR teams face a constantly shifting landscape. Today, frequently shifting economic policies and rising uncertainty are putting businesses into difficult positions that make decision-making and workforce planning for the future harder than ever. Building resilience into HR operations means ensuring your organization can adapt no matter the disruption, risk, or change.
Here’s how to start.
One of the challenges with "resilience" is that even researchers don't fully agree on what it means. A sweeping review of 193 studies found that only a third even defined resilience, variously describing it as a trait, a process, or an outcome.
For HR leaders, resilience means shifting from reactive firefighting to proactive preparation, HR strategy, and workforce planning. Here’s an example: maybe today there’s a talent shortage in which your organization is desperate to hire people with the needed skills to get work done, but then tomorrow there’s a talent surplus, possibly due to industry-wide layoffs. In fact, your organization might be laying off people itself and consequently having to figure out how to get work done with a smaller headcount. The circumstances don’t matter; HR has to be able to figure out how to enable the company to get work done in both environments. Being able to adapt as circumstances change is resilience.
| Aspect | Reactive HR | Resilient HR |
| Focus | Responding to problems after they occur | Anticipating and preparing for disruption |
| Decision-making | Short-term and operational | Strategic and data-informed |
| Structure | Centralized and rigid | Distributed and adaptable |
| Employee Support | Transactional | Proactive and developmental |
| Outcome | Efficiency in stable conditions | Sustainability in changing conditions |
Psychological research shows that resilient systems tend to thrive because of “protective factors” that buffer against adversity. On example: skills. If employees already have (or can rapidly acquire) the capabilities the organization needs, almost any disruption can be managed. Bersin argues this is core to resiliency: “Resilient HR is built on deep skills,” he writes.
But this is an area where many companies lag. Only about a third (37%) of organizations plan to increase investments in training and development, even though the need for a future-ready workforce has never been higher. Fostering a culture of continuous, everyday learning is key to any workforce planning initiative. When employees are both encouraged and properly resourced to continually update their skills, skills gaps never have a chance to become crises. That culture is what allows organizations to adapt whether the talent market is flooded with laid-off workers or running dry in a hot economy.
If the past five years have taught us anything, it’s that rigid work arrangements are fragile. Flexibility is one of the simplest and most powerful levers HR has for building resilience. This may be why, despite headlines focusing on return-to-office initiatives, the share of employees working remotely has actually grown between 2022 and 2025.
Flexible hours, compressed workweeks, phased retirement, and job-sharing all allow companies to match talent supply with fluctuating demand. These organizations are also better positioned to be able to pivot during crises, whether that’s a pandemic, a natural disaster, or an economic downturn. Just as importantly, flexible arrangements provide a safety valve for employees managing family, health, or financial stress. Just make sure you adhere to all relevant HR compliance requirements when implementing flex options.
HR itself is a function that is key to organizational resiliency; advisory group Mercer found that resilient organizations are 1.9x as likely to have HR leaders advising executives directly on human capital opportunities and risks. Yet HR as a function is often stretched to the breaking point. Nearly half (42%) of HR professionals struggle with burnout, and HR roles have shown the highest turnover of any job category (at 14.6%).
That’s not a recipe for resilience; those are indicators that HR itself is at a breaking point. If HR teams burn out or even just underperforms, the entire enterprise suffers. As a result, organizations need to treat the resilience of HR staff as a strategic priority. That includes:
When HR professionals themselves feel supported, they are far more capable of supporting the business through uncertainty.
The most effective HR teams don’t try to shoulder resilience alone; they cultivate it as a cultural characteristic across the entire organization and weave it deeply into their underlying HR strategy. That means resilience is translated into action and daily behaviors among leaders, managers, and employees alike across the whole organization, not just inside HR.
To do so, HR needs to equip both managers and workers with tools and skills to cope with change. “After surveying our people, the majority felt their coping skills improved and that they were equipped with better tools to handle challenges,” Christa Ring, Human Resources Director at the non-profit Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, told Thomson Reuters after implementing a comprehensive organizational resilience program that included features like training sessions, team-building events, and a more flexible work environment.
In the end, culture is what makes resilience stick. When resilience is embedded as a shared value, the organization as a whole is far better prepared for whatever comes next.
The real lesson of Bersin’s “Resilient HR” is that resilience should go beyond being a one-time-use emergency response. Think of it instead as just a better way of working and a compass to guide workforce planning.
It’s about shifting mindset from efficiency to adaptability, from silos to cross-functional teams, from transactional HR to strategic workforce leadership. It’s about embedding flexibility, enforcing HR compliance, investing in skills, protecting the HR function and HR strategy itself, and supporting employees in ways that allow the organization to thrive even when circumstances are uncertain.
Resilient HR is not a temporary fix; it's a long-term operational model. The goal is to create HR systems that sustain agility and continuity, even when faced with rapid or unpredictable change.
CoAdvantage, one of the nation's largest Professional Employer Organization (PEOs), helps small to mid-size companies with HR administration, benefits, payroll, and compliance. To learn more about our risk management and compliance services, contact us today.
**The information provided on this website is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. While we strive to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information, we make no guarantees about its correctness, completeness, or applicability to your specific circumstances. Laws and regulations are subject to change, and you should consult a qualified legal professional before making any decisions based on the information provided here.