By Shelley Abrams
I think by now, most of us have at least heard the term “mindfulness.” Many of us probably practice it privately in our homes. According to the Pew Research Center and The Good Body, it’s estimated that 200 - 500 million people meditate worldwide, and 40 percent of U.S. adults meditate at least once a week. While meditation isn’t the only mindful practice, it is probably the most common and well known.
Mindfulness has its roots in ancient eastern culture, particularly Buddhism, though all religious based cultures use it in one form or another (e.g. contemplative prayer). Mindfulness was introduced to western culture in the 1970s through predominantly secular paths. Many experts trace the current trend to Jon Kabat-Zinn, who introduced Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) practices in 1979—a modality that integrates Eastern philosophy and Western science that’s still in use today.
In the past decade or so, a growing number of western companies have adopted mindfulness practices in their organizations. General Mills (GM, in 2006) and Google (in 2007) are often credited as being some of the first major companies to introduce and adopt mindfulness practices into their daily operations. According to the National Business Group on Health, approximately 52 percent of companies taught mindfulness practices to employees, particularly meditation, as of 2018—an increase from 36 percent in 2017. Many companies integrate it into a daily organized practice with dedicated blocks of time. Others provide a quiet place for employees to do it at will, and some just use it on an employee-by-employee basis as a means of intervention.
But does jumping on the mindfulness bandwagon really make a difference to the bottom line of a company? In other words, is it really worth all the hype? The intent of this article is to look a little deeper into this practice and discover whether or not the return on investment (ROI) is discernible.
What is Mindfulness and Why Use it as a Company?
For purposes of this article, mindfulness is any activity explicitly designed to quiet and “re-center” the mind, such as meditation, tapping or yoga. On an individual basis, Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “a state of consciousness in which individuals pay attention to the present moment with an accepting and nonjudgmental attitude.” A 2009 study described the organizational context of mindfulness as “the processes that keep organizations sensitive to their environment, open and curious to new information, and able to effectively contain and manage unexpected events in a prompt and flexible fashion.” To put it simply, the idea is to get employees and management to stop making rote or reactive decisions based on past habits and behaviors—or get out of autopilot mode—and make informed conscious decisions coming from a place of awareness, focus, calmness and confidence.
Mindfulness as an individual practice has been around for eons. Supposedly it is a relative newcomer to the world of business, having arrived as a mainstream practice starting around 2008. So why did businesses start adopting mindfulness practices? Companies began looking at mindfulness and meditation as stress-reduction techniques. After all, stress is the most common denominator in healthcare costs, employee absenteeism, attrition and decreased productivity.
Many experts argue that mindfulness has been in play in the corporate world for much longer than that. According to a 2018 article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), mindfulness has been in use since the late 1970s as a form of strategic, or “scenario,” planning. In the article, the author used Shell as an example, saying the head of group planning at the time, Pierre Wack, often used mindfulness techniques to quiet his mind so he could open himself up to “new and unexpected sources of information,” hone his intuition, and learn to look at options from all angles. In a 2013 Mindful magazine article, the author states that Peter Drucker addressed mindfulness in his 1968 book, The Age of Discontinuity, in which he discusses “trained perception” as a way to gain clarity and focus in high-stress situations, without falling back on old habits. Some experts say it goes back even further, when the “scientific management” techniques of Frederick Taylor and Elton May were all the rage in the early 20th century.
Any way you look at it, mindfulness in the workplace really isn’t so new of an idea.
Benefits
Many companies and even more studies consistently cite the same key benefits of mindfulness, which include:
Better decision making and problem solving through better listening, more mental clarity, creativity, and less reactivity
A survey by Forrester Consulting for Adobe found that when decision makers embrace creativity in problem solving by deliberately breaking old habits through mindfulness, businesses showed a 150 percent greater market share than their competitors. A Netherlands study found that even short bursts of mindfulness allowed employees to better think “outside the box” to come up with innovative ideas and solutions. Similar results were found in a study conducted by HBR. A study by INSEAD and The Wharton School found that mindfulness lessened the costly negative effects of the “sunk cost bias” (the tendency to continue spending money to break even after a bad decision) because decisions come from a place of clarity and focus rather than a state of fear or reactivity. A recent survey of participants in GM’s programs found that 80 percent of participants believe mindfulness has improved their decision-making skills and 89 percent feel they have become better listeners.
2. Calmer, less stressed employees with better attention spans, more focused efforts and improved task performance
The World Health Organization estimates that companies lose about $300 billion per year in productivity due to stressed employees who call in sick or check out or disengage during the work day. Stressed employees also cost employers twice as much in healthcare costs than less stressed ones. A Detroit study found that mindfulness practices led to a 120 percent increase in productivity, an 85 percent reduction in absenteeism, and 70 percent fewer workplace injuries.
3. Better relationships among employees and clients, leading to better engagement, increased collaboration, and resiliency
A study by A Head for Work revealed a 93 percent improvement in employee relationships with coworkers after mindfulness training. Numerous studies across several industries show that mindfulness leads to better relationships between colleagues and with clients. Additionally, resiliency (the ability to bounce back from change or adverse situations) significantly increased. One study involving small and medium sized businesses found that increased engagement and collaboration as a result of mindfulness activities resulted in a 65 percent increase in stock value. According to a 2018 SIGMA study, 52 percent of participants believed they were better able to manage relationships with their coworkers and colleagues, and 60% felt they had increased resiliency.
4. Improved job satisfaction and less turnover, resulting in better engagement, increased productivity, less burnout and happier employees
Approximately two-thirds of full-time workers experience burnout on the job, according to a Gallup study. In a 2014 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, researchers noted a 20 percent increase in productivity after a short introduction to mindfulness. This also led to decreased burnout and less emotional exhaustion, resulting in an estimated employer savings of approximately $22,000 per employee (based on an average wage of $100,000). The iOpener Institute says that mindfulness increases happiness, which leads to a 46 percent reduction in turnover, employees that stay with their companies twice as long (versus unhappy ones), and 40 percent more engagement and focus on performing assigned tasks.
5. Positively impacted company culture when mindfulness was practiced company-wide
Ninety-one percent of the participants in the SIGMA study felt that mindfulness positively impacted the culture of their company. A Virgin Pulse study revealed that 85 percent of employers believed that wellness programs that featured holistic experiences such as mindfulness positively influenced the culture of a company.
“The main business case for meditation is that if you are fully present on the job, you will be more effective as a leader, you will make better decisions, and you will work better with other people.” ~ Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic
The Bottom Line—ROI
So let’s talk the bottom line—the Return on Investment (ROI). To do this, we’ll look at actual results for two companies: SAP and Aetna.
SAP introduced mindfulness into their workforce in 2013 using Google’s Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program. In a 2018 Business News article, SAP reported a 200 percent ROI for their mindfulness training (when compared to a relevant control group), based on 6.5 percent greater employee engagement, 13.8 percent improved focus, 6.9 percent better communication and 5.2 percent better collaboration. In addition, SAP also announced in 2018 that it believed mindfulness helped it to gain a competitive edge and increase its performance in the stock market.
Aetna partnered with Duke University in 2012 to assess the impact of their program, which was introduced in 2011. Duke University found that Aetna gained an estimated 11-to-1 return on its investment in mindfulness training, quantified as a $6.3 million positive impact on the bottom line. They based their ROI calculation on results that included 28% less stress. Less stress translated to 62 minutes of increased productivity per week, or approximately $3,000 per employee, because of decreased absenteeism and a 7 percent reduction in healthcare costs at an approximate savings of $2,000 per employee.
Mindfulness is not a panacea. It is a proven technique for improving the overall productivity and engagement of a company’s employees, thereby positively impacting the bottom line. There are of course barriers, such as employee or management reluctance, time and space. But in this day and age, it seems that those are obstacles more easily overcome than not. If you decide to introduce mindfulness into your workplace, the two most important things you can do is get your leaders on board and actively doing it, while simultaneously aligning your mindfulness efforts with your organizational goals and culture.