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Mindfulness in the workplace: an introduction

Published on June 30, 2024   12 min

A selection of talks on Management, Leadership & Organisation

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0:00
Hello, my name is Niamh Imbusch. I'm a lecturer in the Faculty of Business at Technological University Dublin in Ireland. In today's lecture, we'll be introducing the concept of mindfulness and exploring how and why it is used in the workplace.
0:20
In this lecture, we will be considering what is mindfulness, what is the connection if any between mindfulness and workplace well-being, what approaches are taken to introducing mindfulness in the workplace and what if any evidence exists to support their work. Finally, we'll think about things to think about. How do we get it right?
0:43
In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, it was stated that almost half of American employers offer some form of mindfulness training to their workers. The article stated that the global corporate wellness market is valued at over $50 billion. Indeed many household names that you might be familiar with are well publicized as offering or as having offered mindfulness programs to their employees. Just some of these companies include Google, Intel, Microsoft, SAP, General Mills, and Aetna.
1:22
What is mindfulness? There are many definitions, over 100 in all. For our purposes, we focus on the term as it was introduced by Jon Kabat-Zinn. In the late 1970s, Kabat-Zinn, a medical practitioner, established a stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn had been a longtime practitioner of Zen Buddhism and also enjoyed the benefits of Hatha Yoga. He combined elements of these practices with his scientific knowledge to develop a program called mindfulness-based stress reduction, MBSR, offering it firstly to people attending a clinic for chronic back pain. That program was such a success that other people became interested in it and it has since been offered in many therapeutic domains. We are interested in it because it has moved into the personal and professional development domains and we can see that it is being offered extensively in workplaces. Kabat-Zinn describes mindfulness as paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. You can read more about this program in his book Full Catastrophe Living.
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Mindfulness in the workplace: an introduction

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