01 Dec 2015 Six Steps to Build Your Company’s Mindfulness Program
Over the last ten years, there has been a significant increase in the number of companies that have launched mindfulness programs for their employees. Often referred to as the “newest productivity hack”, meditation is taking the corporate world by storm.
In some cases, it started from the very top with a CEO who experienced the benefits of mindfulness meditation first hand. In other large organizations, the initiatives started at the grass-root level with groups of employees implementing various meditation programs for the lunch hour. Some of these buzz-worthy organizations include ABC News, Apple, Aetna, General Mills, Google, Proctor & Gamble, Sony, the US Army, and the US Marines.
In this post, I want to share the story of one employee touched by Mindfulness Mediation.
On February 18, 2004, Mark Bertolini had a near-death experience. While on a skiing vacation in Vermont with his family he lost control resulting in a traumatic accident. His daughter found him a few minutes later lying motionless on the ground. His neck and spinal cord injuries were so severe that the Doctors prepared the family for the worst. Miraculously Mark Bertolini managed to survive and a couple of weeks after the accident he was back at his office in Hartford, CT. At the time Mr. Bertolini was a senior executive with Aetna, one of America’s largest health insurance companies. Today, Mr. Bertolini is Aetna’s CEO.
For several months after the accident, Mr. Bertolini could not manage even an hour without his powerful prescription painkillers. Being the strong-willed person that he is, he continued with his grueling schedule of the executive committee and board meetings, press conferences, traveling to Aetna’s other locations, and more. All the while, his health situation was not improving. After a year of learning to live with his agonizing pain, Mr. Bertolini started looking for alternative methods. He took to yoga and soon thereafter he started to practice mindfulness meditation. Gradually, he began to notice improvements. He was able to better tolerate his pain, his range of movement expanded, and he felt better about his recovery prospects. The combination of the yoga and mindfulness meditation, in addition to the physio treatments, helped him turn his debilitating condition around.
Somewhere along the way, Mr. Bertolini started conducting mindfulness sessions in his office with his executive team. They were instantly engaged. So much so, that a few months later he turned to Aetna’s then-chief medical officer, Dr. Lenny Reisman, and the two of them agreed to pilot a mindfulness program for 239 Aetna staff members. The pilot was carefully designed, involving Duke University researchers who monitored the impact of the program on employee productivity and well-being, and the Florida-based company e-Mindful who helped compile the program. At the end of the three-month pilot, the impact of the program was assessed and the results were astounding. Self-reported stress levels, as well as cortisol (the “stress hormone”) levels, were down. The results of the pilot were reported in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology*.
In summary, the researchers found that:
“Both the mindfulness-based and therapeutic yoga programs may provide viable and effective interventions to target high stress levels, sleep quality, and autonomic balance in employees.”
Soon after the pilot, Aetna adopted the mindfulness and yoga program company-wide, and to date over 20,000 of the company’s 50,000 employees have attended the mindfulness-training program.
The Results
According to the New York Times, the benefits from Aetna’s mindfulness have been significant and measurable. Aetna’s employees reported a 28% reduction in stress levels, 20% improvement in sleep quality and an increase in productivity of 62 minutes per week per employee. And these are just the factors that Aetna was able to measure. My hypothesis is that the benefits extended way beyond what they were able to measure.
My Recommendation
You do not need much in order to implement a mindfulness meditation program at your company or within your team.
Here are mine…
6 Steps to Building a Mindfulness Program in your Workplace:
1. Find out if there is an experienced mindfulness meditator in your midst. You might be surprised at the number of individuals who practice mindfulness in their personal lives. Having someone internal, who already understands both the benefits and the process would expedite the process, so be sure to ask around!
2. If not, identify an external mindfulness facilitator. It is important to bring in someone with the knowledge to facilitate the program effectively. Although a facilitator is external to the company, they can work with you to understand the nature of the business and how to relate the material to the employees in a way they will respond to.
3. Train a few employees to become volunteer mindfulness facilitators. This way you can run the program with internal resources. Using the scouted resource will empower your staff to become subject matter experts and eventually act as facilitators themselves. This will give the program guaranteed longevity.
4. Start a lunchtime mindfulness meditation program and advertise it internally. The benefits of starting the second half of the day following meditation will speak for itself. Give the program time to grow through word of mouth and internal advertising.
5. Create a mindfulness webpage on your company’s internal web site. To educate is to empower. Take the time to explain the benefits and how it works so they can make the decision for themselves.
6. Start an eight-week mindfulness-training program that employees can sign up for. Begin with an external resource, and move to the company’s trained facilitators. This is where tangible results will occur. Aetna estimates a cost savings of $2,000 per employee in healthcare costs, and gains of $3,000 per employee in productivity.
While Mindfulness is still relatively new to the corporate world, there are a number of large organizations that are implementing the program and seeing results. Happy and healthy employees can mean big things for productivity and company growth, not to mention company branding.
If you would like to learn more about Mindfulness Meditation visit my page by clicking here.
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