There is a quiet but steady revolution happening in our workplaces.
A new generation is hooking into mind fitness and wellness, and  is demanding that employers provide brain-expanding opportunities.
![The co-author of Finding New Meaning in Life, Marcia Griffin.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170623150548im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/5/1/7/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gr517q.png/1472995981902.jpg)
"These people are creating a great shift, and changing their priorities," says James McWhinney, author of The Wellbeing Revolution. "Instead of working harder at their jobs, they work harder on themselves."
Some big Australian businesses are taking the lead on providing holistic health services to employees.
Westpac, for example, is offering new graduates an "employee care program" to enhance wellbeing, including on-site employee wellness centres, free nutrition advice, priority access to specialist practitioners, a free after-hours GP service, and employee counselling service. In addition, one day of paid wellbeing and lifestyle leave is offered every year.
Janet McLeod, director and organisational psychologist at The WRAP Group, a consultancy that specialises in wellness and resilience, says that today's workplace is increasingly complex and challenging.
"Employees are being asked to be more adaptive and creative with available resources," she says.
"It requires personal resilience and mental strength to thrive in this continually changing landscape. Â Resilience involves thoughts, feelings and behaviours that we all can develop."
McLeod says resilience is backed by hard data to enable adaptive responses when dealing with adversity and change.
So it seems that employers who offer mind-expanding opportunities are not only developing better coping skills for their people, but it is a new tool to attract and retain talent  in the future.
Resilience, too, is at the heart of a new book, Finding New Meaning in Life, co-authored by Marcia Griffin and Paul McQuillan. Griffin became the first Telstra "Business Woman of the Year" and McQuillan is director of the Viktor Frankl Institute Australia.
Based on logotherapy, developed in the 1930s by Viktor Frankl who survived the Nazi concentration camps, it encapsulates the belief that we all have the choice to find meaning out of even the most difficult times.
"At a time in history when we have never been more globally connected through the internet, many of us feel disconnected from each other due to less face-to-face contact," Griffin says.
Just as a business looks at its balance sheet, we can do a personal balance assessment in the four critical areas of our lives; spiritual, physical, emotional and financial, she says.
Future-proofing brain power is the topic of a report, Future Work Skills 2020, released by the Institute for the Future at the University of Phoenix. One of the identified skills of sense-making is about using brain power, or higher level thinking skills, that currently are not able to be replicated by a smart machine.
A business that can harness the thinking power of its employees will have a competitive edge. Google has been offering a course to its employees called Search Inside Yourself, a program blending mindfulness, emotional intelligence and neuroscience to awaken the latent talent of its staff.
Meanwhile, at Westpac,  chief executive Brian Hartzer is gearing up his employees for the "service revolution". "We are determined to become more agile in meeting the needs of customers and adapting to changing market dynamics," he says.
As many service businesses know, if they are to grow and innovate, the competitive sway lies in the thinking agility, mental wellness, and resilience of their people.
Warren Frehse is a career transition coach and workplace behavioural consultant. He is author of Manage Your Own Career: Reinvent Your Job; Reinvent Yourself and professional member of the Career Development Association of Australia, and Australian Human Resources Institute.