Mindfulness in the Workplace
Mindfulness gives employees permission and space to think — to be present — leading to mental agility, resilience and self-awareness. In addition, mindfulness can reduce emotional exhaustion, increase openness to new ideas and develop compassion and empathy.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Workplaces today face increasing demands and challenges. High stress levels may result in decreased effectiveness, creativity, and efficiency in employees as well as in low workplace morale. Combine these factors with the COVID-19 pandemic, and they may lead to decreased productivity and increased employee absenteeism and burnout.
Our workplace programs are based on the internationally acclaimed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn at the Centre for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School. Supported by extensive research, MBSR fosters conscious awareness, enabling participants to become unstuck of patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, or interpersonal interactions in all aspects of their lives and to navigate life more skillfully and consciously +both at work and at home.
Our Mindfulness programs are customized to meet the unique needs of your workplace, enhancing the focus, creativity, and health of your employees.
Does it really work?
Recent article in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Jerry Slutsky, Brian Chin, Julianna Raye and J. David Creswell examined the effectiveness of mindfulness training in the workplace.
Findings suggest that while small doses of mindfulness training (such as the half-day training) may be enough to increase perceptions of job productivity, longer-term mindfulness training programs are needed to improve work focus, job satisfaction, and a positive relationship to work.
Today’s work culture can cause great strain on employees, high workloads and frequent distractions can have negative effects on employee well-being. A regular mindfulness practice might be one way to buffer from these negative effects on employees.
Slutsky, J., Chin, B., Raye, J., & Creswell, J. D. (2019). Mindfulness training improves employee well-being: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
Neuroscience and Mindfulness – a brain study
Eight weeks of meditation training enhanced brain connectivity between the default connectivity between the default attention network, allowing participants to quickly switch between mind wandering states and focused attention, as well as maintaining attention once in attentive state.
https://neurosciencenews.com/meditation-consciousness-quickness-19112/
Zhang, Z., Luh, WM., Duan, W. et al. (2021). Longitudinal effects of meditation on brain resting-state functional connectivity. Scientific Reports
Research continues to explore the benefits of mindfulness meditation in the treatment of psychological disorders, such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, addition, alcoholism, mild cognitive impairment and ADHD.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00776/full
Simon, R & Engström, M. (2015). The default mode network as a biomarker for monitoring the therapeutic effects of meditation. Frontiers in Psychology
Details
Mindfulness programs in the workplace can be customized to suit teams, departments and corporations.
For rates and program details, including flexible start dates and times, and for more information, contact Pam Hauck at