Benefits of Mindfulness in the Workplace

Diverse organizations such as Google, Aetna, Intel, the Seattle Seahawks and General Mills all have something in common. All of these companies provide mindfulness training to their employees. Mindfulness is an awareness of the present moment, without judgment—a noticing of what is arising. Since the workplace is more fast-paced and competitive than ever, many companies are increasingly turning towards the practice of mindfulness to help their employees deal with the stresses of the workplace environment.  Below are just some of the benefits of practicing mindfulness in the workplace.

According to Business News Daily, workplace stress is a major “health epidemic of the 21st century” costing American businesses up to $300 billion a year. Mindfulness can curb the stress and tension of everyday work whilst enhancing creativity and clarity of mind and focus, and boosting working memory. Researchers at the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic have found that mindfulness-based techniques, including meditation, can lower stress levels in a demanding work environment leading to happier, more engaged employees. In addition, the practice of mindfulness also induces health benefits to the mindful individual. Research has shown that mindfulness can help reduce the aging of the brain and build a stronger immune system. Employers are turning to workplace-based lifestyle interventions like meditation to enhance employee self-care and decrease illness-causing stress, helping to control employee healthcare costs.

Meditation also has a long-lasting influence on human cognition, including how we conceive new ideas since mindfulness mediation works to enhance creativity and innovation. Moreover, mediators are quicker to adjust brain waves that screen out distraction, explaining their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts while reducing distractions in the workplace. Those who completed the mindfulness meditation training “made faster and significantly more pronounced attention-based adjustments to the alpha-rhythm” compared to those in the control group, shedding light on how meditation can help the brain reduce distractions⁶ (The Harvard Gazette).

Research finds that improvements to working memory are another benefit of mindfulness. A study conducted with the military showed that within the meditating military group, working memory capacity increased with meditation practice. In addition, meditation practice was directly related to self-reported positive affect and inversely related to self-reported negative affect⁷ (American Psychological Association, APA).

There are many benefits of mindfulness to the individual that confer to their employer and their workplace, as employees become less stressed and more clear, creative and focused to name a few. For more on these studies, visit the Mindfulness at Ramapo College research page https://www.ramapo.edu/mindfulness/research-news-links/

Categories: Mindfulness