Summary: The Importance Of Mindfulness In The Workplace

Antanaitis, A. (2015). Mindfulness in the workplace benefits and strategies to integrate mindfulness-based programs in the workplace. Journal: The Official Publication of the Ontario Occupational Health Nurses Association, 34(2), 39.
The author of this qualitative study examined mindfulness in the workplace, benefits, and strategies to integrate mindfulness-based programs in the workplace. This article presents stress in the workplace as a serious contributor to job dissatisfaction, employee turnover, reduced efficiency, illness and even death. Data was collected after 600 employees participated in a six-week mindfulness-based program. The results demonstrated that there was a significant decrease in their number of days off by 71% attributed
Data was collected from 27 participants after participating in a mindfulness training which was developed specific to the occupational context and the most common occupational context was health care. Results of this study concluded that mindfulness training was truly effective in reducing employee stress and strain. The study additionally indicated that there was a significant relationship between mindfulness training, job performance, and employee engagement but advised that further research needed to be conducted to make firm conclusions. Although the authors of this article did not mention any study limitation, it was noted that this study also reviewed extensive cross- sectional articles which may potentially create room for bias and also make pre-existing knowledge on workplace mindfulness unclear. This study is valuable as it seeks to explain mindfulness and its relationship to employee stress and strain which will generally contribute to the growing gap in workplace
Data collection consisted of a general survey which was completed once before participants filled in their diary booklet. The study result suggests that employees working in a job that is mentally exhausting, mindfulness seeks to promote job satisfaction and significantly eliminate emotional exhaustion. The results of the study additionally indicate that mindfulness may decrease emotional exhaustion which will significantly increase job satisfaction. Several limitations identified by the researchers include that the study was limited to employees holding interactive service jobs. This study was able to identify and demonstrate how mindfulness affects emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction through emotion regulation strategy of surface acting. Future research may thus be advised to investigate whether findings generalize to other jobs that are not emotional labor intensive. This study is of value as the findings can contribute to the proposed research in understanding the benefits of mindfulness in workplaces. This study additionally provides a wealth of evidence that demonstrates mindfulness as a very powerful trait/state which promotes mental and physical health for a large population of individuals with different