The End of Workplace Mindfulness Training?

William J. Fleming, a professor at the Well-Being Research Centre at Oxford, recently published a review of the impact of individual-level well-being interventions on the mental health of over 46,000 employees across 233 organizations. When it comes to subjective well-being (self-ratings of one’s perception of how well one is doing), there appears to be no impact on those who take these courses when compared to those who just continue with their own ways of coping. On the surface, the findings do not surprise me. We’ve known for some time that when resilience is promoted through interventions that only change individuals, the sustainability of those changes is extremely poor.

Fleming’s work, though, should be a wake-up call for organizational consultants. Asking people to change themselves instead of changing the work environment around them is a strategy that not only wastes resources but may also infuriate employees, who feel like all the responsibility for dealing with a toxic work environment and unrealistic demands rests on their shoulders alone.

There is a better way to approach workplace stress reduction.

Focusing on improving the ruggedness (e.g., grit, mindfulness, personal attribution style) of employees in combination with a change to their environment can produce changes that reduce stress and improve engagement. For example, Fleming’s paper does offer a bit of good news. He notes that employees whose workplaces provided them with opportunities to volunteer and share their skills, especially out in their communities, reported better psychological health. As Fleming writes, “Enhancing social resources, rather than psychological skills, may be more effective for improving workers' well‐being.”

If one thinks more systemically, it’s easy to see why this is the case. Time spent volunteering changes our perceptions of ourselves, accentuating our skillset and offering us a more powerful identity as a person who contributes to the welfare of others. It also gives us a very tangible opportunity to socialize with our colleagues, breaking social isolation and challenging competitive norms. It may also increase our sense of self-efficacy, self-esteem, and other positive emotions as a consequence of making a contribution to one’s community.

Of course, in defense of mindfulness-based training, my own recently published research with Dr. Raquel Arjona in the International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology found that individually focused interventions like mindfulness may be most effective for those at the highest levels of risk for psychological distress, but do very little for individuals with more resources who are exposed to less stress. In other words, despite the ubiquity of workplace and school interventions focused on individual change, it all may be a huge waste of effort and money unless we (1) reach those who are exposed to the most difficult environments, and (2) combine these individual interventions with changes to the social and physical environments around people.

This means employers are going to have to spend more time thinking about workplace safety, their staff’s sense of common mission and belonging in the workplace, whether the workplace offers employees the chance to use a range of skills and gives them ways to make a real contribution, and whether they are safe physically and psychologically. Combined, these kinds of workplace initiatives are likely to create a better functioning, more engaged workforce. That is especially true if people are also well-enough compensated and experience enough flexibility to allow them to cope with life’s hurdles when they happen beyond the workplace.

It all comes down to providing a great work environment that brings out the best in people. To be frank, no amount of meditation or yoga is going to change a toxic workplace nor people’s experience of stress working there.