As an experienced life coach, Isis Monteverde travels the world, helping people to lead happier, healthier, more productive lives. As Ms Monteverde recognises all too well, the key to both personal and professional success is achieving a healthy and sustainable work-life balance. This article will look at mindfulness, providing an overview of the benefits of employers implementing measures to cultivate calmness and clarity in the workplace.
Workplace mindfulness centres around employees focusing on the present while they are working while still being aware of their feelings, thoughts and physical sensations. Cultivating mindfulness can help businesses to reduce stress and anxiety among their workforce by instilling more positive and productive working environments. Incorporating mindfulness activities into workday routines can culminate in a variety of benefits in terms of worker health and wellbeing, in turn impacting the business’s bottom line.
One simple way to encourage mindfulness at work is through breathing exercises. Despite being one of the least conspicuous ways to practice mindfulness at work, focusing on breath can have a deep impact on cognitive state. By taking a minute to focus on inhaling and exhaling, workers can mitigate stress throughout the working day, helping them to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
It is also important for all employees to take regular breaks, with one well-known productivity study revealing that the group’s most productive employees were those who stuck to an optimised work rhythm of 52 minutes of work followed by a 17-minute break. The researchers theorised that this is due to the fact that the brain works in ‘high activity’ mode for approximately one hour before switching to low for a short period, presenting the perfect opportunity for a mindful break.
A mindful employee takes in what is happening in the workplace rather than blindly reacting to it, adopting a non-judgemental approach to both their work and their relationships with colleagues and management. Mindfulness presents a multitude of benefits for employers and employees alike, including increased response flexibility and empathy, decreased rumination, and increased persistence and self-determination. Mindful employees are typically more committed to tasks and more accepting of colleagues, creating scope for enhanced interpersonal relationships and greater cohesion between teams. One key benefit of workplace mindfulness is that it promotes resiliency, helping individuals to approach each other positively, decreasing reactivity and helping workers to avoid becoming overwhelmed by task-related stressors.
In a fast-paced, ‘always on’ age, many people have come to regard stressful working environments as par for the course. It is easy for modern workers to become overwhelmed by meetings, deadlines and an ever-increasing abundance of communication. However, this constant state of stress can lead to burnout, culminating in strained relationships with colleagues and decreased productivity. Fortunately, mindfulness is a simple yet highly effective means of reversing this trend, helping employees to navigate challenges in the workplace with greater resilience.
