Improve Well-Being and Workplace Performance with Online Mindfulness Training
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“online mindfulness intervention seems to be both practical and effective in decreasing employee stress, while improving resiliency, vigor, and work engagement, thereby enhancing overall employee well-being.” – Kimberly Aikens
Work is very important for our health and well-being. We spend approximately 25% of our adult lives at work. How we spend that time is immensely important for our psychological, social, and physical health. But, nearly 2/3 of employees worldwide are unhappy at work. This is partially due to work-related stress which is epidemic in the western workplace. Almost two thirds of workers reporting high levels of stress at work. This stress can result in impaired health and can result in burnout; producing fatigue, cynicism, and professional inefficacy.
To help overcome unhappiness, stress, and burnout, mindfulness practices have been implemented in the workplace. Indeed, mindfulness practices have been shown to markedly reduce the physiological and psychological responses to stress. As a result, it has become very trendy for business to incorporate meditation into the workday to help improve employee well-being, health, and productivity. These programs attempt to increase the employees’ mindfulness at work and thereby reduce stress and burnout. Online mindfulness training has the advantage of being convenient and easily integrated into a busy schedule. It is important, though, to verify its effectiveness for improving psychological health and workplace performance.
In today’s Research News article “Online Mindfulness Training Increases Well-Being, Trait Emotional Intelligence, and Workplace Competency Ratings: A Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00255/full?utm_source=F-AAE&utm_medium=EMLF&utm_campaign=MRK_1254058_69_Psycho_20200225_arts_A), Nadler and colleagues recruited healthy adults in their workplace and randomly assigned them to either a wait-list control condition or to receive an 8-week online workplace-based mindfulness training. The training was based upon the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) programs. Mindfulness training was practiced 6 or 7 days per week. The workers were measured before and after training for mindfulness, perceived stress, resilience, positive and negative emotions, emotional intelligence, and workplace competence.
They found that in comparison to baseline and the wait-list control condition, mindfulness training produced significant increases in mindfulness, resilience, and positive emotions and significant decreases in perceived stress and negative emotions. Also, there were significant increase in emotional intelligence, including recognition of emotion in self and recognition of emotion in others, regulation of emotion in self, and regulation of emotion in others. In addition, they found that the greater the change in mindfulness, particularly in the acting with awareness and non-reactivity to inner experience facets of mindfulness, in the intervention group, the greater the increases in resilience, positive emotions, and emotional intelligence and the greater the decreases in negative emotions and perceived stress. Finally, mindfulness training produced an increase in job performance, including decisiveness, making tough calls, assuming responsibility, interpersonal relationships, and creativity.
The present study results suggest the online mindfulness training is effective in improving psychological health, emotional intelligence, and job performance. Mindfulness training has been previously shown to improve resilience, emotions and emotional intelligence, perceived stress, and job performance. It appears that mindfulness training improves the employees ability to act mindfully with awareness and not react to their inner feelings. This means that they pay better attention to their jobs and are less reactive to their emotions during work. This make them better employees and improves their well-being.
The contribution of the present work is to demonstrate that these benefits can be produce by online training. This improves the usefulness of mindfulness training for workers as it can be accomplished inexpensively and conveniently with minimal disruption of work. This can make them better at their jobs and mentally and emotionally healthier. It was not studied here but this would predice not only better performance but also less burnout and better employee retention.
So, improve well-being and workplace performance with online mindfulness training.
“Mindfulness can encourage divergent thinking, enabling you to generate more innovative solutions to business problems.” – Mind Tools
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Nadler R, Carswell JJ and Minda JP (2020) Online Mindfulness Training Increases Well-Being, Trait Emotional Intelligence, and Workplace Competency Ratings: A Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial. Front. Psychol. 11:255. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00255
A randomized waitlist-controlled trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of an online 8-week mindfulness-based training program in a sample of adults employed fulltime at a Fortune 100 company in the United States. Baseline measures were collected in both intervention and control groups. Following training, the intervention group (N = 37) showed statistically significant increases in resilience and positive mood, and significant decreases in stress and negative mood. There were no reported improvements in the wait-list control group (N = 65). Trait mindfulness and emotional intelligence (EI) were also assessed. Following the intervention mindfulness intervention participants reported increases in trait mindfulness and increases on all trait EI facets with the exception of empathy. The control group did not report any positive changes in these variables, and reported reductions in resilience and increases in negative mood. Finally, both self and colleague ratings of workplace competencies were collected in the intervention group only and provided preliminary evidence that mindfulness training enhanced performance on key leadership competencies including competencies related to decisiveness and creativity. The present study demonstrates the effectiveness of an online-based mindfulness training program for enhancing well-being, self-perceptions of emotional intelligence, and workplace performance.