Background
It is becoming increasingly important to build a resilient and positive workforce to thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, especially in light of COVID-19, where unprecedented disruption is created and there is constant change and unpredictability. Japan is no exception, yet there is no instrument to measure employee resilience to date. The aim of this study is to develop and validate the Japanese versions of the 9-item Employee Resilience (Naswall, Malinen, Kunt, & Hodliffe, 2019).
Methods
Permission was obtained from the original scale developer, and translation into Japanese was performed according to the ISPOR guidelines (Wild et al., 2005). A web survey was conducted targeting 485 Japanese employees from a variety of industries and the questionnaire consisted of Japanese Employee Resilience (J-ER), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) Coaching Behaviour Inventory (CBI), Psychological Capital (PsyCap), Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and Work Engagement (WE).
Results
Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that the 9-item one-factor structure displayed a good fit to the data (CFI = .984; TLI = .973, RMSEA = .074; SRMR = .021), and internal consistency was high (α=.944). J-ER was positively correlated with CD-RISC (r=.57) and Resilience subscale of PsyCap (r =.48), indicating that J-ER is related but distinct from the two resilience scales. In addition, Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to examine the criterion-related validity of J-ER. SEM revealed that supervisory coaching behaviour (CBI) was positively related to J-ER, in return J-ER showed positive relationships with OCB and WE (CFI = .982; TLI = .974, RMSEA = .078; SRMR = .055).
Scientific Contribution
The Japanese version of J-ER appears to be a psychometrically adequate measure for assessing Japanese employees’ resilience. The results of this study suggest that supervisory coaching behaviour may be a determinant of employee resilience, which then could positively influence organizational citizenship behaviour and work engagement. Future research should investigate the longitudinal predictive validity of the Japanese Employee Resilience.