New Article: Essential elements in evidence-based interventions to improve employee mindfulness

Abstract

The use of mindfulness skill promises a bevy of positive outcomes at work, increasing organizational interest in designing interventions for boosting it. To create these interventions, organizations need more information on key elements that support mindfulness and deeper understanding about how each element mechanizes deployment of mindfulness skill. This manuscript addresses these needs. We articulate how the micro mindfulness skills of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (identified as the “S-ART framework” by neuropsychologists) emerge and combine to create a state of mindfulness. We then provide an example to demonstrate how including each of these elements in a mindfulness intervention provides employees with a stepwise self-management technique for better interacting with distressing or uncomfortable cognition. In all, we demonstrate how mindfulness interventions that incorporate self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence create a more robust state of mindfulness.

Pre-Print URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377174905_Essential_elements_in_evidence-based_interventions_to_improve_employee_mindfulness

Management Summary

“As the founder of secular mindfulness-based stress reduction, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, states, to be mindful is to pay attention, on-purpose, nonjudgmentally to what is happening in the present moment” (p. 1). Research is beginning to show robust effects of employer-initiated mindfulness training and positive employee outcomes, such as increased well-being, better interpersonal dynamics, and higher performance.

After reviewing the literature on workplace mindfulness interventions, Grace Lemmon PhD, Goran Kuljanin PhD, and I explain the S-ART mindfulness framework and the potential benefits of introducing it in the workplace.

S-ART stands for self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence. Self-awareness is the awareness of one’s own feelings and sensory experiences. Self-regulation is the ability to deliberately choose if/how to react in response to the content of your self-awareness. And, self-transcendence is the ability to consider your and others’ needs, values, and goals when choosing how to react to a thought, feeling, or emotion.

Mindfulness skills are beneficial in the workplace, but we need training in concrete, evidence-based skills, such as S-ART, to fully realize those benefits.

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