Functional Imagery Training for Increasing Employee Psychological Resilience

ORCID

Abstract

Work-related mental ill-health is a significant issue affecting individuals worldwide including the United Kingdom, and has adverse individual, organisational, and societal impacts. Psychological interventions can address this problem by promoting individual coping skills, or resilience. Before developing and implementing resilience interventions, conceptual clarity of psychological resilience is needed. This thesis begins by considering definitions of psychological resilience, especially in the context of the workplace, and how it can be better conceptualised so that it is a target of psychological interventions. Following consideration of definitions, existing measures of resilience in the workplace are evaluated (Study 1) and a more appropriate tool to measure resilience is developed (Employee Resilience Assessment; Study 2). This tool adheres to a process-based definition of resilience and targets components malleable to interventions. It is applicable in the context of everyday stress, which is prevalent in the workplace, as opposed to single and significant adversity. Studies 3 and 4 validate this new resilience scale by demonstrating construct validity, reliability, and test-retest reliability at four weeks. Having developed a measure of resilience appropriate in this context, Study 5 consults members of the public and gathers opinions and experiences regarding interventions for increasing employee psychological resilience to inform intervention development. Study 6 then compares the intervention, Functional Imagery Training, to a waitlist control group in a pre-registered randomised trial to assess impact on employee resilience, quality of life, wellbeing, life satisfaction, and work-based outcomes. FIT encourages the development of personalised resilience goals (i.e. behaviours which contribute to resilience; processes) and trains mental imagery to motivate and sustain employees’ self-efficacy to work towards these resilience goals. Compared to controls, participants trained in FIT show benefits for resilience and wellbeing. Qualitative data from FIT participants (Study 7) provided generally very positive feedback on experiences with the intervention and recommendations for improvements. Finally, study 8 implemented FIT in a unique workplace, the military, to assess any impact of the intervention on retention, resilience, self-efficacy, and grit on military recruits undergoing the British Army commando course. Differences in outcomes following FIT were not significant but recruits provided positive qualitative feedback from experiences with FIT. Preliminary evidence from this thesis shows that FIT strengthens employee resilience and improves wellbeing.

Awarding Institution(s)

University of Plymouth

Supervisor

Jackie Andrade, Ben Whalley, Jon Rhodes

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2025

Embargo Period

2026-09-09

Deposit Date

December 2025

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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This item is under embargo until 09 September 2026

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