It’s often inevitable that the workplace comes with a certain level of stress. Deadlines, your boss’s expectations, drama with coworkers, it can all add up.
Some stress is good, as many studies have long pointed out, but too much stress can have serious health consequences.
Beyond health, stress also impacts factors such as productivity and overall quality of life. Employees who are overly stressed present an increase in absenteeism and presenteeism in the office, an increase in number of days taken off for health care concerns and overall increases in health care costs incurred by employers.
It’s easy to see how stress is one of the biggest burdens of modern life, with real, tangible health, productivity, and economic impact. As such, more and more companies and organisations are looking for solutions to decrease stress, burn out and turn over within the workplace. Recent improvements in company culture across the board include directly addressing employees’ mental health, including stress levels.
Bringing Meditation into the Workplace
Stress is a growing issue in the workplace and, as mentioned, it’s very expensive.
It’s estimated that at least 1 million workers are absent from the workplace each day, due to stress and anxiety. On average, 5 office hours are lost each week to employees thinking about the causes of their stress, whether these are work-related or due to an outside source.
On-the-job stress also leads to high turnover rates. According to the University of Massachusetts, 40% of all job turnover is due to stress. While this may not seem like a direct, stress-related cost that the employer incurs, if stress were reduced, job turnover would decrease.
So how do you know if your workplace is experiencing stress? Look around and take a look at your team members.
Is there a heavy atmosphere? Do you notice:
- Employees taking more sick time or days off?
- High employee turnover?
- Low employee engagement?
- Frequent complaints of burn out?
If the answer to any is ‘yes’, it’s very likely that your employees are dealing with stress while at work, whether or not that stress is directly related to their jobs. Other potential warning signs for on-the-job stress among your team can include more workplace accidents, isolation among team members, low morale, complaints of common health warning signs such as headaches or upset stomach, and general irritability.
Alleviating this stress, regardless of where it stems, is vital to your company’s results, productivity, financial success and employee retention.
Meditation is an effective tool to boost wellbeing in the workplace
While, sometimes, it can feel like alleviating workplace stress is a long and arduous task that will only come with serious organisational shifts (which, in some instances, is true), there are certain steps that workplace leaders can take to help boost employee well-being, quickly.
Meditation is one of the easiest, truly effective tools that leaders and employees can harness to reduce stress quickly and efficiently. According to Harvard Health Publishing, meditation has been known to ease psychological stresses, including anxiety, depression and pain, and even assist stressed and anxious individuals with related symptoms such as irritability and poor sleep. The best part? All of these benefits can be increased by practicing mindfulness meditation techniques within a group setting — like at work.
In the workplace specifically, meditation can:
- Help reduce feelings of stress and help people feel calmer – We often work in stressful and busy environments, add in targets, staffing issues and changing situations which need attention and staff members can often feel stressed, tired and overwhelmed.
- Reduce feeling of anxiety & worry about what might happen, a presentation or meeting.
- Reduce brain fog and staff struggling make decisions – regular meditation has been shown to help people with their abilities to concentrate and improve focus.
This could help you in your business by improving focused productivity, by giving people the mental clarity and space for planning and strategy so that they can plan ahead in the business rather than just focusing on what is in front of them right now. - Particular meditation practices like loving kindness can increase levels of compassion for ourselves but also for others.
So how could this help in your business? Staff members may be more inclined to work together, to help each other and support each. This could help to improve how your teams work and communicate with each other, potentially meaning more collaboration, team creating plans and strategies together. - Reduce feelings of frustration and anger.
- More able to cope with and embrace change.
- Be able to see the big picture and work more efficiently as a team. It can be easy for staff to become focused on the problems and fire fighting issues they are currently facing. This often means that they are unable to remain focused on the reason why we are doing the work or what we are aiming towards.With meditation practice people often say they can cope with the stress and changes that happen in the everyday easier. Also they are able to remain focused and see the bigger picture of what is going on. This means that staff are able to work more efficiently, stay motivated and also problem solve easier.This can also help you staff to work better as a team as they are able to help each other, support and also guide the direction of effort towards the goals.
Meditation does so much more than simply reduce workplace stress and alleviate anxiety-related symptoms. It can also help…
- Decrease burn out
- Improve workplace (and general life) satisfaction
- Help those who struggle with aches & pains
- Increase productivity
- Increase engagement with others
- Better quality sleep
- Improve one’s general sense of well-being
- Promote emotional health among employees
- Increase self-awareness and mindfulness
- Increase attention span
- Reduce mind wandering and worrisome or intrusive thoughts
Meditation & Sound Baths for Businesses
If you are a business, corporation or charity who would like to help staff members to feel calmer, more focused, increase their mental clarity and concentration, Mindfulness Meditation could be just what you need and we can offer group sessions in person and online depending on your needs.
If you’d like to find out more about our meditation sessions in the workplace, please click HERE, or use the link icons at the bottom of this email to get in touch.
Sources: https://www.flow.is/
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