Mindful organisations: Successful organisations?

28 December 2018

Mindful organisations: Successful organisations?

Nowadays more and more organisations are facing high staff stress levels, poor decision making, staff turnover, interpersonal conflicts or absenteeism, resulting in low workplace productivity. Unfortunately, shipping industry is not excluded! According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace report, 85% of employees reported being either not engaged or actively disengaged at work in—which Gallup estimates costs companies $7 trillion a year  in lost productivity. Thus, how organisations may be more mindful and subsequently more effective at both communicating and collaborating a shared goal?

Maritime Knowledge | 09/03/18

What is mindfulness?

Actually, the term “mindfulness” is a translation of the Pali term sati, which is a significant element of Buddhist traditions. Mindfulness can be defined as the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed mostly through the practice of meditation. Clinical studies have documented both physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in different categories. Subsequently many programs based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s model, the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and similar ones have been widely adopted.

Mindfulness Meditation

Meditation is a practice where people focus mind on a particular object  in order to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm state, reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. Specifically, mindfulness meditation involves the process of developing the skill of bringing one’s attention to whatever is happening in the present moment. Several meditation exercises have been designed to develop mindfulness meditation This technique can fuel performance by managing distressing emotions such as feeling out of control, jumping from one thought to the next or ruminating on negative thoughts by physically altering brain.

Why Mindfulness meditation

• To start your day with more energy and clarity
• To find inner peace and be dominated by toxic thoughts
• To deal with creativity backwards
• To increase your profitability

Mindfulness and corporate life

Many researches have shown that staff practicing mindfulness is more focused to daily tasks. Good performance may be bad if not better! It is imperative that people at work are more focused on their tasks and gain control of unruly thoughts and behaviors. Mindfulness is something that we all naturally possess but we need to practice on a daily basis to have the capacity to be present at today’s dynamic work environment. Therefore, organisations need to acknowledge its benefits in the workplace as it can help employees become more innovative and productive.

The following tips may help designing a mindfulness development program and ensure that your staff dominates its emotions and mental acuity:

• Support the mindfulness development by promoting those who are not in favor of mindfulness
• Start your day meetings with a quick meditation (about 60 seconds)
• Allocate a space for people to relax in the workplace
• Encourage people to interact, practice together
• Offer an extended mindfulness intervention, which supports practice over a sustained period

Commitment from senior management is perhaps the most critical part of ensuring that an organisation’s mindfulness development program works well.

According to a 2016 study by National Business Group on Health and Fidelity Investments, 22% of companies had mindfulness development programs in place and another 21% was planning to invest in this practice the year after. In today’s busy, economy driven world, it is very important that this solution is spread worldwide in every industry.

In conclusion, a more mindful organisation can make the difference. Mindfulness training is the way towards resilience and better collaboration in the business world. This practice need to be integrated into culture at the leadership level and then spread throughout an organisation at any sector and in the maritime industry as well; the goal is not to remove stress at all but rework it!

The video below further explains mindfulness !

Source; Safety4Sea