Studies point toward clear benefits to cultivating mindfulness in the workplace

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Research says mind­ful­ness works for indi­vid­u­als. But does it work in the bot­tom-line-dri­ven work­place, or is it just a friv­o­lous feel-good program?

This is the ques­tion tack­led in a grow­ing num­ber of stud­ies. Here are three ways, based on recent stud­ies, that cul­ti­vat­ing moment-to-moment aware­ness might improve workplaces.

Med­i­ta­tion might build self-con­fi­dence in leaders

A.D. Amar and col­leagues at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster mea­sured the self-per­cep­tion of lead­er­ship skills among a sam­ple of senior man­agers in the Lon­don area—and then put them through a 12-week sec­u­lar­ized Vipas­sana med­i­ta­tion-train­ing program.

Their results, pub­lished in the Acad­e­my of Man­age­ment Pro­ceed­ings, revealed that train­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanced their over­all self-con­fi­dence, as well as the indi­vid­ual skills like inspir­ing a shared vision and demon­strat­ing moral intelligence.

“How­ev­er,” con­clude the authors, “med­i­ta­tion did not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance par­tic­i­pants’ skills as a role mod­el and enabling oth­ers to act”—areas that will need more study in the future.

Mind­ful­ness might work best in con­junc­tion with autonomy

As we report­ed last year, researchers found that the more mind­ful the super­vi­sor, the low­er their employ­ees’ emo­tion­al exhaus­tion and the high­er their job sat­is­fac­tion. But that study also revealed a caveat: When basic psy­cho­log­i­cal needs like feel­ings of auton­o­my and con­nec­tion with oth­er peo­ple aren’t being met, the employ­ee can lose the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a mind­ful supervisor.

A new study, pub­lished in the Sep­tem­ber 2014 edi­tion of the Mind­ful­ness, extends that study by specif­i­cal­ly explor­ing the link between mind­ful­ness and auton­o­my. The researchers recruit­ed two hun­dred and fifty-nine par­tic­i­pants, assess­ing them for their mind­ful traits—like the abil­i­ty to pay atten­tion for long peri­ods of time—and explor­ing how much auton­o­my they felt like they had on the job (as opposed to fac­ing a more con­trol­ling man­age­r­i­al style).

Echo­ing that pre­vi­ous study, the researchers found that both auton­o­my and mind­ful­ness “had direct rela­tions with employ­ee work well-being.” Feel­ing less-empow­ered at work was asso­ci­at­ed with a low­er lev­el of health and hap­pi­ness. These indi­rect effects, found the researchers, were mod­er­at­ed by mindfulness—meaning that more mind­ful peo­ple were less like­ly to feel frus­tra­tion, even when super­vi­sors squashed their independence.

“Mind­ful­ness thus appears to act as a pro­tec­tive fac­tor in con­trol­ling work envi­ron­ments,” con­clude the researchers.

Online train­ing can enhance employ­ee well-being

If mind­ful­ness works in the office, then what’s the best way to deliv­er the training?

A study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Occu­pa­tion­al and Envi­ron­men­tal Med­i­cine sought to deter­mine whether an online mind­ful­ness pro­gram cre­at­ed for a spe­cif­ic work­place, the Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, could cut stress while enhanc­ing the resilien­cy and well-being of employees.

Eighty-nine par­tic­i­pants com­plet­ed sci­en­tif­ic scales designed to mea­sure their degree of stress, mind­ful­ness, resilien­cy, and vig­or. They were then divid­ed into two groups—one to take the online class and one to sit on the wait list.

After the first group fin­ished, the researchers came six months lat­er to see how every­one was doing. They found that, in fact, the group that took the class was doing a lot better—they were less stressed, more resilient, and more ener­getic than the group that couldn’t yet take the class.

“This online mind­ful­ness inter­ven­tion seems to be both prac­ti­cal and effec­tive in… enhanc­ing over­all employ­ee well-being,” con­clude the researchers.

– Jere­my Adam Smith is pro­duc­er and edi­tor of the Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter’s web­site, an online mag­a­zine based at UC-Berke­ley that high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altruism.

Learn more:

• Which kind of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion to choose? Com­par­ing sit­ting med­i­ta­tion, body scan, and mind­ful yoga
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress