In the past ten years, mindfulness has grown from personal practice to a legitimate and successful part of a businesses’ growth and development. Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, and many other industry-leading publications have brought the benefits of mindfulness from the homefront to the board room.
And yet, with all the information about mindfulness, it’s easy to lose sight of the tangible and measurable benefits for businesses. Meditation, the core practice of mindfulness training, doesn’t just make you feel good; it offers a real ROI (return on investment). Research is showing that bringing mindfulness into the workplace is a sound investment that pays. Here are six reasons why you should incorporate mindfulness practices into your business processes.
Mindfulness isn’t just good for us as individuals. Learn how it can help your company grow.
Mindfulness boosts creativity and innovation.
No matter your industry or the services you offer, creativity and innovation are at the heart of all successful companies. With business creativity, you and your team solve problems faster and easier than ever before. Innovative thinking allows new ideas and processes to be introduced or improved within your business, such as improving or replacing business processes to increase efficiency and productivity or to enable the company to extend the range or quality of existing products and services.
Mindfulness practices allow a company to improve both creativity and innovation. Research shows that just a few minutes of mindfulness practice led to statistically significant increases in creative thinking and increased the range of ideas subjects could generate.
Mindfulness allows for better personal and professional decisions.
With the overbearing and often overwhelming expectations on us daily, most of us live a reactionary life. Our days and nights are filled with instantaneous reactions to the triggers in front of us.
At its core, mindfulness leaves us more emotionally balanced, which leads to less reactive thinking and actions to be more focused and intentional. Better decision-making and greater emotional intelligence levels are the results.
The frequency that we react by impulse to negative situations becomes smaller. Simultaneously, what is under our control increases. The same is true for the ability to see the bigger picture instead of getting stuck on the granular details.
Mindfulness is a powerful branding tool.
Branding is the process of creating a robust and positive perception of a company, its products, or services in the customer’s mind by combining such elements as logo, design, mission and vision statements, and a consistent theme throughout all marketing communications. Effective branding helps companies differentiate themselves from their competitors and build a loyal customer base.
Today’s consumer market is more informed than ever and holds every business to a higher standard of responsibility to its customers, employees, and community. By actively incorporating mindfulness practices and principles into the purpose and process of your company, you have the opportunity to attract and retain these emotionally intelligent and socially responsible customers who not only will engage with your business but become your brand advocates.
Mindfulness increases productivity and engagement.
Being productive can help a company increase and utilize the capacity of the human resources it has. Most productive companies have happy and healthy employees, which are the basis of a successful organization.
Engaging employees is critical for retaining valuable talent and is an important piece of the employee satisfaction puzzle, as disengaged employees are more likely to leave their jobs. According to Forbes, employees who are engaged in their work are more likely to be motivated and remain committed to their employer.
Mindfulness training has powerful and measurable effects on both productivity and engagement. Research has found that this training led to increased health and vitality, a greater sense of purpose, enhanced focus, and overall better well-being.
Mindfulness reduces stress and mitigates the risk of burnout.
The world of work has drastically changed in the last 20 years, and for most Americans, not for the better. Unhealthy expectations, fewer resources, and time-deficiency mindsets have become the “way it is.” We live in an “always on” state of perpetual stress and technological distractions.
Mindfulness works as a powerful counterbalance to this common state. Numerous studies show that mindfulness practice helps employees reduce stress and build resilience. One recent study showed that the benefits of mindfulness training enhanced the mental and physical well-being of the practitioner long after the ten or fifteen minutes of the person doing the practice.
Mindfulness works as a powerful tool for recruiting top talent.
Very few businesses are not feeling the pressure of recruiting and hiring talent now that society is opening back up. The employee pool is just not there, and those that are are sought after and coveted more than ever.
Mindfulness programs give companies a competitive edge. This is perhaps why leading companies like Google, Nike, Apple, and Goldman Sachs are heavily invested in mindfulness training. And it makes sense. If given a choice between a firm that invests in the well-being and resilience of its employees and one that doesn’t, most savvy applicants will choose the company that is more invested in its employees’ success not just as they work for the company but as they exist as humans.
The takeaway from this research is that mindfulness is a sound investment — one that pays out on a multitude of levels. When our customers are researching brands that have a level of social responsibility and doing good, investing in the well-being and resilience of employees is the right thing to do.
By investing in mindfulness, businesses can expect to create an environment with less stress, more significant innovation and productivity, and increase top the recruitment and retainment of top talent.