Resilire founder Joyce McCarthy, FCA, is helping scaling organisations embed a sustainable growth culture that supports people and boosts resilience
“Recalibrate. Resolve. Rise.” When Joyce McCarthy launched her HR advisory and coaching firm Resilire in September 2024, she knew exactly where her focus needed to be.
Inspired by her own experience re-evaluating her career and life priorities in response to events beyond her control, McCarthy resolved to use this very personal insight to help others prepare for, overcome and learn from professional challenges and setbacks.
“Resilire comes from the Latin word for ‘resilient’. When I decided I wanted to set up my own business and work for myself, there was never any doubt about what my focus would be; I knew it had to be about helping people to embrace change and build resilience to achieve their goals.”
McCarthy had begun her own career training in Dublin as a Chartered Accountant before moving into banking, first in Australia and then the UK, where her career focus shifted first to sales and then to people and performance management, and organisational culture.
“When I moved to London, I started a new job at a large organisation managing a big team and leading innovation in people management,” McCarthy says.
“We were overseeing all aspects of performance management from metrics to bonuses, rewards and recognition schemes, and really focusing on how to innovate and improve this whole area.
“That was when I started to think seriously about what the culture of an organisation really means, and the level of stress individuals can experience when they are under pressure to perform.”
McCarthy “absolutely loved” her work and was delighted when she was promoted to director level and selected for fast-track progression through the organisation’s senior ranks.
“Then, I got pregnant. I had just started my new role and I didn’t want to have to go on maternity leave, but I remember the doctor saying to me, ‘You need to prioritise your health and your pregnancy now,’ and that was a shock to me at the time.”
McCarthy endured a difficult birth and serious complications with the arrival of her first child.
“I was recovering when I was told my employer was carrying out a cost-cutting exercise and essentially downsizing,” she says.
“I felt I needed to rush back to work early from maternity leave to try to claim a chair, but, essentially, the music stopped and I had nowhere to sit.”
Losing her job in this way was a shock for McCarthy. “My whole world was completely rocked,” she says.
“I had gone back to work before I had physically or emotionally recovered. I already felt vulnerable and then I was told my job was at risk of being made redundant.
“At the time, I felt really let down by my employer and that’s when I started to think, ‘I need to be my own boss and never again depend on an employer’.
The experience also opened McCarthy’s eyes to the very human cost of high-pressure work environments built solely to service the bottom line.
“It gave me a lot of empathy for other people and their circumstances. I went from being really focused on performance, productivity, output and just working really, really hard, to questioning everything and asking myself, ‘am I going too fast here?’
“I was a first-time parent and really unwell for the first time in my life. I had to stop and think, ‘There’s more to life than work; your health and the health of your family is so much more important’.”
McCarthy subsequently decided to complete a diploma course in resilience coaching and left London in 2021 to return to Dublin with her husband and young family.
She established Resilire six months ago, specialising in talent and performance management strategy alongside executive coaching.
“My focus is on supporting scaling businesses to reach their potential by helping them with people and culture goals,” McCarthy says.
“This is especially important to me because Ireland is just such an entrepreneurial, relationship-focused country.
“When I came back home, I started building a network of wonderful, supportive entrepreneurial people almost straight away.
“These entrepreneurs and others like them build amazing businesses, but when these businesses reach a certain size, they are going to need to define their own identity from a people perspective, and that’s where I come in.”
Culture is key to resilience in any organisation, McCarthy says, and embedding a culture of psychological safety and trust is paramount in a growing company.
“Blame culture really doesn’t support business performance,” she says. “The focus should always be the end goal. As long as you’re focused on that bigger goal, you can absorb and withstand the little mistakes that happen along the way, the things that go wrong and the unexpected events and setbacks.
“Ultimately, people need to know that they can be open and honest; that it is safe to raise issues; and that the people around them have their back.
“Embedding a ‘test and learn’ environment that encourages people to fail fast with no repercussions actually encourages innovation and boosts performance.”
In tandem, it is important for employers to understand that their people are multi-faceted humans with full lives outside work, who are often contending with a whole plethora of competing and shifting demands.
“People are not bots; they’re not widgets. They don’t just show up to work to perform a task. Typically, people have a lot more going on in their lives than work, and their resilience can be depleted over time by a whole range of factors, be they family-, health- or money-related.
“That is why, I think rightly, we are seeing the people management focus shift towards wellbeing as a holistic concept.
“At the end of the day, people want to be seen and supported at work; to feel that they can share their challenges in a safe environment; and to be recognised for their contribution and all the ‘small wins’ along the way.
“This is what performance management is really about, I think, and helping companies build a culture that genuinely supports it is my core focus with Resilire.”
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