Are you considering supporting employee health through meditation? Meditation benefits the brain, our mood and all areas of health and personal wellbeing. By incorporating a meditation strategy in your workplace, you provide opportunities for staff to improve mental focus during long days, which enhances time management and performance in high-stress work environments. This is why workplaces are starting to prioritize meditation for employee health and wellbeing.
1. Improves Physiological Stress Levels
A landmark study published in Hormones and Behaviour finds mantra-style meditation to be an effective technique for stress-management because it’s proven to reduce the stress hormone, cortisol, by 30% (Jevning, 1978). Plasma cortisol is a steroid hormone made by the adrenal gland whose responsibility is to aid a person’s body to respond to stress. Cortisol also regulates the body’s blood sugar levels, and helps fight infections. Although the stress is always present in the body, your staff are able to strategically manage the stress. All of these factors combined, have a positive cumulative effect, and over time you may notice a decrease in absentee rates. Unscheduled absences can affect the healthcare system in devastating ways.
2. Boosts Organization’s Mandate
Corporate meditation reflects your organization’s mandate. It shows that you are supporting leadership, as well as personal and professional growth. When staff know they’ll be supported at work, they’ll be more inclined to taking the job with you, over a competitor. According to a McKinsey report, there’s a 22% gap between employer and employee perceptions about the level of employee benefits being offered. By incorporating meditation as employee benefits, you’re emphasizing the significance of thoughtful reflection for effective human resource management. See one of our articles on Strengthening Your Nursing Pipeline.
3. Reduces Workplace Stress
It’s been said that burnout is a workplace issue, not a personal issue. By implementing corporate meditation strategy for wellbeing, you’re allowing your staff to proactively shut-out the workplace stressors. By developing good organizational hygiene, you provide an outlet for your staff to shift their body rhythms which has a positive correlation on the workplace. With only a short period of meditation (as little as 5 minutes), one enters a state of relaxed awareness, building more personal resilience and a calmer work environment.
4. Improves Mental Function
Meditation is proven to increase IQ, creativity, problem-solving and brain coherence. When you learn to meditate, by using a mantra, you’re slowing the thoughts and becoming an observer of those thoughts. You can detach from the thinking processes and day-to-day stressors. Although there is diversity in meditation styles (Mindfulness, compassion, transcendental, and focused attention meditation), “interventions show that meditation practices improve prefrontal cortex (PFC) functions like cognition, self-awareness, attention, and memory and reduce psychological symptoms”.
How Can Your Hospital Get Started With A Meditation Strategy?
Implementing corporate meditation in the workplace can be a progressive initiative. Here are a few factors hospitals need to keep in mind when introducing this program:
In-person Vs Virtual
Be as flexible as you can when you offer meditation training. Beginning a meditation practice for wellness can be a challenge for some staff members, especially trying to find time for the lessons. Employees are often motivated to change, but find it difficult due to scheduling. At Satori, we work exclusively on a virtual basis. We also work extensively on the issue of scheduling their practice, because we know some health practitioners have difficult schedules. We take a tailored approach that no other corporate meditation program does.
Create A Meditation Space
To support employee health through meditation, be proactive and dedicate some place for your staff. In Satori Radio Episode 15: Create You Own Meditation Space, we also advocate setting-up a meditation space in the home. It can just be an empty room with some comfortable chairs and a yoga mat. You can also add some mindfulness books. By creating a space for students, you improve success of sticking with the daily habit. I used to meditate in the hospital chapel, and encourage students to do the same; it’s a quiet and peaceful space.
Promote Meditation As A Daily Practice
It’s vitally important to encourage your staff to take the time-out. Consistency is key! If it wasn’t for my dad asking me regularly, “are you still meditating?”, I might not be so successful in this daily practice today.
Hire The Right Meditation Coach
Seek a professional meditation instructor or coach with an established daily practice and experience in healthcare. They are not only trained to teach, but can be a mentor to staff in helping them overcome barriers to regular meditation. Once you’ve made the decision to work with Satori, you can continue to provide monthly or quarterly groups until your staff firmly grasps the concepts, habits and importance of implementing meditation in their daily self-care routine.
Assign The Right Metrics
Although metrics are great at helping you establish parameters, consider having an in-depth consultation with the meditation coach to help you to establish the right metrics. According to Jennifer Moss: “It requires good organizational hygiene, better data, asking more timely and relevant questions, smarter budgeting (more micro-budgeting), and ensuring that wellness offerings are included as part of your well-being strategy” Jennifer Moss.
Get Started Today
Contact Lynn @ Satori for a quote. We believe that with the right tools and strategies to manage stress, people can live to the fullest potential. By incorporating a daily practice of meditation for self-care, you’re improving your team’s chances in making better choices. Stress in the workplace environment puts everyone’s health at risk, and makes employees susceptible to anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, and many other health complications.
Connect with us today to get started in supporting employee health through meditation!
No Comments