Mindfulness Inc.

It’s been six months since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, and for many – if not all – some aspect of our social, professional, or personal lives have changed – maybe forever!

As a species, we’re impressively adaptable. Through war, famine, and natural disaster, we’ve proven ourselves capable of rallying and coming together in times of need. This time around, however, coming together – at least physically – only exacerbates the problem.

So it is, in relative isolation, we are all looking for new ways to cope. Many of the tried and true ways of dealing with stress and anxiety are no longer available to us, whether that’s an after-work visit to the local bar to mingle with friends, a night at the movies, or dining out at your favorite restaurant. Going to the gym or the yoga study poses its own set of risks and challenges. So what’s left? How does one manage stress, stay fit, healthy, and focused on the task at hand?

My guest in this episode of Inside Asia says “mindfulness” is a solution for our times. Davina Ho is Co-Founder and Chief Well-Being Officer at Hasiko, a Singapore-based advisory and training organization. She says that pre-Covid, stress levels in the workplace where on the rise. The global pandemic has only exacerbated the problem. So much so, she argues, that it’s time for employers to get involved. 

But is an employee’s mental well-being a company’s responsibility? Studies show that reduced productivity, poor health, and absenteeism can mean the difference between profit and loss. For most organizations, people are the core asset. If they fail to perform, the organization falters, and who can afford that in a time of growing uncertainty.

Still, for many corporate leaders, the idea of introducing meditation or other forms of mindfulness to it’s workforce remains a distant concept. For others, it’s downright counter-intuitive. In the minds of most, pumping up productivity means increasing the effort, working harder, and doing more. If people were machines, that might make sense. Layer in some additional processing power, data analysis, or functionality and see if you can’t eke out a half-percentage of extra productivity, right?

But people aren’t machines. The mind – as much as the body – needs rest. Rejuvenation is central if you’re to count on clarity of thought, high performance, and sound decision-making. 

I’ve been around long enough to know that corporate leaders are all about building performance cultures. You want a better sales result? The answer lies in investing in more sophisticated sales management platforms, lead-generation and trackable performance measures. In other words, you introduce new tools to drive a better result.

Meditation is a tool. And like upgrading a company’s enterprise software, it comes with planning, implementation, and training. The only difference is that humans are less binary than machines, which means, you’ll need to customize and encourage variations on the tool until you hit on what’s right for every individual in your organization. 

I know what you’re thinking. It still sounds just a little too experimental. Executives like data. Data drives decisions. So what’s the data on mindfulness in the workplace? Unfortunately, it’s mixed. So much depends on the culture of the organization, and the determination of top management to integrate these practices in everything they do. It’s typically not enough to allow an employee to sit quietly for 20 minutes twice a day, in order to re-boot. There’s more to it. How to educate employees, get them to commit, and build support groups to ensure that the best results are possible. It’s no different from sales training. You can learn all the skills you want, but the benefits are only as good as the results. 

If you’re still not convinced, here’s one more thing to consider. As Davina points out, Generation X and Z aren’t waiting around for an organization to figure out what needs to be done to attract and retain them. They are actively searching for a new kind of corporate culture that embraces the whole employee, invests in their well-being, and offers something more than a monthly pay-check. 

Still not sure? Well, then I suggest you meditate on it.