The Human Factor – Resilience over Efficiency

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For over a century, businesses have focused on maximizing efficiency and minimizing redundancy.  Overstaffing was viewed by the bean counters as redundancy and waste.  And waste has always been the ugly five-letter word in business.  But there is a shift happening in how HR policies and managers are seemingly prioritizing people over balance sheets. 

This shift from “just-in-time” efficiency to “resilience” has organizations prioritizing adaptability and sustainability over pure cost-cutting. Driven by rapid technological changes and ongoing market volatility, companies have begun to recognize that heavily optimized systems — which leave no room for errors or the unexpected — are more likely to break under pressure. 

Businesses Break Under Pressure

Just think of how Covid impacted business.  The US saw roughly 200,000 excess business closures above normal pre-pandemic rates during the first year of the pandemic alone, representing an estimated 130,000 to 200,000 permanent business failures specifically caused or accelerated by COVID-19 challenges, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve.  The biggest impact was not on small businesses but on larger corporations instead.  At the height of the crisis, corporate bankruptcies reached a 10-year high with 639 large US companies filing for bankruptcy.  Retail, hospitality, and travel bore the brunt of the closures, with high-profile chains utilizing bankruptcies to restructure debt or liquidate. 

Sweet Tomatoes, the beloved 90-unit, self-serve salad and soup buffet chain was hit hardest. Their core model, built entirely around a large, interactive buffet, was impossible to sustain. They filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and permanently closed all locations.  They weren’t alone.  Boston Market, the rotisserie chicken chain heavily reliant on in-store dining, suffered massive sales drops as well as supply-chain and inflation issues.  The chain dwindled from over 300 to less than 30 locations today.  Sizzler, the iconic steakhouse and salad bar chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, citing indoor-dining lockdowns and the challenges of dealing with landlords who refused to provide rent abatements.  Le Pain Quotidien, an international bakery-cafe chain, was forced into bankruptcy and closed all 98 of its US stores. Chuck E. Cheese, the interactive, children’s entertainment and pizza chain, didn’t go completely under but was essentially brought to a halt. Facing a 90% drop in business, parent company CEC Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was forced to permanently close dozens of locations to restructure.  And California Pizza Kitchen, the popular healthy pizza and pasta chain, faced lease-related challenges from the pandemic and closure, which forced them to shutter several company-owned locations nationwide and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Challenges Organizations Face Today

A pandemic is not the only kind of pressure businesses can face.  Today, companies face a host of challenges:

1. Accelerating Technological Disruption.  The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence and automation requires adaptable, highly skilled employees and agile architectures to prevent legacy obsolescence.

2. Supply Chain & Geopolitical Volatility.  Recent global disruptions highlight that rigid efficiency makes operations fragile. Investing in redundant, diversified supply networks and localized operations protects companies from sudden shocks.  The current Iran War and closure of the Straight of Hormuz is a perfect example of this.

3. Regulatory & ESG Compliance.  ESG compliance refers to a company’s adherence to laws, regulations, and industry standards surrounding Environmental, Social, and Governance practices. Strict, evolving Corporate Sustainability mandates and labor regulations force businesses to design sustainable operating models to avoid massive penalties and legal risks.

4. Talent Retention & Demographics.  A shrinking talent pool (from deportations, slowing population growth, rising solopreneurship, outmigration and halted immigration, etc.) and changing employee expectations require businesses to offer continuous learning and flexible, purpose-driven environments to secure critical skills. 

The Pivot to Resilience

To survive all of this, rather than chasing short-term margins, leaders are prioritizing long-term resilience as the way to manage these compounding global pressures. This evolution centers on building durable, future-proof workforces and operational models. 

First, they are prioritizing people over margins.  That’s not to say the bottom line doesn’t matter.  It does… of course.  It’s just a focus on long-term success over short-term profits.  Rather than squeezing every hour of productivity from employees to minimize headcount, resilient companies are investing in cross-training, mental health, and flexible working environments. This reduces burnout and retains critical institutional knowledge.

Second, they are embracing the rise of “Efficient Resiliency.”  Efficiency isn’t dead, but its focus has changed. Instead of optimizing for a single, predictable outcome, businesses are building in buffer capacity and agile, adaptable processes so they can re-plan at a moment’s notice.  Flexibility is the key.

Third, they are embracing continuous learning.  With dynamic teams and project-based work, adaptability has become a core metric. Organizations are leaning heavily into upskilling so staff can seamlessly pivot to new technologies, new projects and new business models quickly and easily.

By prioritizing organizational resilience, businesses are better equipped to absorb unexpected shocks and transform disruptions into opportunities for growth. This all sounds good in theory, but what about practice?  Which businesses can we look at which have recently made the shift to prioritizing resilience?  Did it work?

3 Success Stories of the Resilience Pivot

Here are three companies that successfully built in “efficient resiliency” over the last year.

Case Study 1 – Adobe (Software & Tech) – Faced with the massive, high-speed rollout of generative AI tools that threatened to alienate and burn out its creative and engineering teams, Adobe rejected the tech-industry trend of mass layoffs and hyper-optimization. Instead, they prioritized psychological safety and continuous upskilling.  Internally, Adobe launched structured “AI Literacy and Co-Pilot” internal learning paths. Crucially, leadership explicitly decoupled AI adoption from headcount reduction, assuring staff that the technology was meant to reduce administrative burnout, not replace their jobs. Rather than forcing rigid, siloed roles, Adobe shifted to a highly flexible, internal marketplace model. Employees were encouraged to spend 10% of their week cross-training in adjacent digital disciplines.

Adobe dramatically reduced the attrition and quiet quitting that usually accompanies massive tech shifts. By securing employee trust, they built a highly adaptable workforce that successfully rolled out major software updates ahead of schedule, proving that psychological safety directly impacts product delivery.

Case Study 2 – Ally Financial (Banking & Financial Services) – Navigating intense macroeconomic volatility and high interest rates, Ally realized that financial stress at home directly  downgraded employee performance and resilience at work. They shifted from generic wellness perks to comprehensive life-infrastructure support.  Guided by the 2025 Mental Health America Bell Seal framework, Ally integrated financial wellness directly into their mental health benefits. They provided direct financial coaching, child-care subsidies, and personalized mental health pathways to support employees across the entire continuum of stress.  Moreover, managers were formally trained to identify early signs of work intensification and burnout. Staffing models were adjusted to include “breathing room allocations” — intentionally budgeting projects with a 15% headcount buffer so teams weren’t consistently running at 100% capacity.

Ally achieved some of the highest retention scores in the financial sector. Because employees felt structurally supported, absenteeism dropped, and customer-satisfaction metrics soared, demonstrating that protecting the human foundation protects the balance sheet.

Case Study 3 – Unilever (Consumer Goods) – Recognizing that global geopolitical and climate disruptions were exhausting their regional teams, Unilever pivoted from localized role optimization to systemic enterprise wellbeing.  They embedded workforce health directly into their leadership performance metrics. Managers are no longer evaluated solely on output or cost-cutting; up to 20% of their performance review became tied to team retention, burnout mitigation, and the psychological safety scores of their direct reports.  Unilever also institutionalized flexible, asynchronous work windows to accommodate caregiving and mid-life transitions. And they created a robust contingent talent pipeline—utilizing specialized, on-demand staff to temporarily relieve over-burdened full-time teams during peak disruption cycles.

The result?  According to data aligned with the McKinsey Health Institute, Unilever’s systemic integration of wellbeing resulted in measurable reductions in healthcare and turnover costs. Their teams are fundamentally more stable and capable of pivoting during global logistics crises.

The Anatomy of a Failed Pivot

Does pivoting to resiliency always work?  No.  While many companies tried to pivot to resilience over the last year, a significant portion failed. Many mid-to-large-cap corporations attempted what can only be called a “surface-level wellness pivot.”  Frustrated by declining productivity and rising stress in 2025, leadership teams tried to patch over systemic burnout by buying bulk subscriptions to generic meditation apps, mandating Wellness Fridays, and setting up automated AI alerting tools to track employee sentiment.

While offering these superficial perks, management refused to change their underlying operating models. They kept headcount aggressively lean, expected the same hyper-optimized output from depleted teams, and ignored the intense stress caused by rapid AI integrations.  Employees immediately saw this as a hypocritical band-aid. The result was a massive backlash of cynicism, a spike in burnout-related medical costs, and a wave of top-tier talent defecting to human-centric organizations.  This underscored that companies cannot just ‘meditate’ their way out of broken workflows. Resilience isn’t an individual burden forced onto an employee; it is an organizational architecture built for them.

Next week, we’ll look at what companies can do to build just such an organizational architecture and pivot to resilience properly, avoiding the missteps.  Stay tuned.

© 2026, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.