Cubicles and Corporations

The Health and Economic Implications of Worksite Wellness Programs

Burnout: The Disease of Our Civilization. This article talks about how "more businesses are realizing that the long-term health of their bottom line is directly tied to the long-term health of their employees. Qigong and Tai Chi are the most profound health practices that can empower individuals and corporations to meet the challenges outlined in the article. CFO's, HR Executives, Benefit Managers, Medical Directors, and  Wellness Professionals should see the

American Institute for Preventative Medicine's wellness whitepaper:

The Health and Economic Implications of Worksite Wellness Programs (view as webpage or .pdf).

This paper clearly justifies the economic and health benefits of WORKSITE WELLNESS PROGRAMS such as those incorporating Qigong and mind-body practices.

Job Stress: America's #1 Health Problem? The Newsletter of The American Institute of Stress.

What Mindfulness Can Do for a Team. Harvard Business Review. May 31, 2019.

Meditation rooms are the hottest new work perkWhy companies like Salesforce, Apple, Google and Nike are embracing the trend.

7 Myths About Meditation Preventing You From Grasping The Amazing Benefits of Mindfulness. If you're focused on the wrong things, you won't get the true benefits. The number one way to get the benefits of mindfulness is to practice Qigong.

Zen at Work. Why firms are investing in employee wellness.

Qigong Reduces Stress in Computer Workers.

Enhancing Profitability with Corporate Wellness Programs (video 4:48).

Why Corporate Wellness Should Include Tai Chi and Qigong (video 5:51).

Meditation Can Reduce Health Care Costs by 28%.

Mayo Clinic Study Recommends Tai Chi and Yoga for Stress.

Meditation Makes You Better at Everything—Including Work.

There’s new evidence that Silicon Valley's favorite mindfulness habit may help defeat a key problem of agingSilicon Valley has figured out the mindfulness part of Qigong. Now it needs to discover the rest of it.

Converging software development and mindfulness

yoga at sunset

"Software development requires concentration and focus, an understanding of designing, coding, languages, and programming and how they all work together. It can also require comprehension of technology, science, engineering, and math. Clearly, a lot of brainpower goes into being a software developer. In order to keep that brainpower in a positive flow, it’s important to train mental clarity, the science and techniques behind the mind to avoid stress; this can all be done through mindfulness." Converging software development and mindfulness. SD Times.

Study Shows 8-Week Mindfulness Course Increases Workplace Effectiveness By 6 Percent.

Mary L. Durham, PhD, head of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research, explains that “stress in the workplace is an enormous burden – not just for employees but on companies as well.” She cites the fact that after heart disease, stress is the second-most disabling illness for workers, with an annual price tag of more than $300 billion in lost work time, health care costs, and stress reduction efforts.

Mindfulness meditation melts away work-related stress. Work-related stress is reaching epidemic proportions in America. It has a negative effect on our health, our relationships and our lives. Studies have found that 30 to 40 percent of workers consider their job extremely stressful. Since its introduction to the West in the late 1970s, mindfulness meditation has been drawing devotees seeking peace and balance in their lives. At its core, mindfulness is about focusing on the present moment, clearing your mind of the stresses and distractions of a typical, frenetic workday.

Enhancing Profitability with Corporate Wellness Programs (video 4:48).

 Spending too much $$$ on healthcare for your employees? Can't get enough exercise because you're working too much? Want to know how to reduce stress? Listen to Dr. Roger Jahnke talk about how to live and work with less stress by doing Qigong now.

In Silicon Valley, Meditation Is No Fad. It Could Make Your Career. Meditation and mindfulness are the new rage in Silicon Valley. And it's not just about inner peace—it's about getting ahead.

A profitable calm: Meditation for investors and traders. Meditation is fast becoming a standard part of business training and practice. Top business schools are including meditation courses, and meditation rooms and workshops are a routine part of company cultures. Investors and traders, whose business is buying and selling risk, benefit from meditation in ways that can transform not only their profitability, but their ability to enjoy their work and the life it makes possible.

meditating at workMindfulness is about paying attention to what you are experiencing right now with genuine interest and a willingness to accept that experience, says Kaveri S. Patel, D.O., a family medicine doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. “The health benefits are many. Studies show that mindfulness reduces stress and anxiety, and provides us with a sense of well-being and the ability to notice the joyful moments in life. It also helps us relate to each other from a kinder place, making work a more positive experience and giving us tools to better cope with challenges.”

How to Use Mindfulness to Increase Your Team’s Creativity

Why Companies Are Embracing Corporate Mindfulness

Companies Get Strict on Health of Workers. Employers are feeling the need to intensify their efforts to create an environment where people feel they are responsible for their own health.

The Google engineer teaching happiness in three steps. To improve the well-being of its workers, Google employed one of its engineers to increase happiness. David G Allan tried out his three-step plan – does it work.

At Aetna, a C.E.O.’s Management by Mantra. Aetna is at the vanguard of a movement that is quietly spreading through the business world. More than one-quarter of the company’s work force of 50,000 has participated in at least one class, and those who have report, on average, a 28 percent reduction in their stress levels, a 20 percent improvement in sleep quality and a 19 percent reduction in pain. They also become more effective on the job, gaining an average of 62 minutes per week of productivity each, which Aetna estimates is worth $3,000 per employee per year. Demand for the programs continues to rise; every class is overbooked. Companies like Google offer emotional intelligence courses for employees. General Mills has a meditation room in every building on its corporate campus. And even buttoned-up Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are teaching meditation on the job. The aims of such programs are eclectic. Some, such as Aetna’s, are intended to improve overall well-being; others to increase focus and productivity. Most of the programs — from yoga sessions for factory workers to guided meditations for executives — aim to make employees more present-minded, less prone to make rash decisions and generally nicer people to work with. Adoption of these unconventional practices in the workplace coincides with growing interest among the American public. More than 21 million people now practice yoga, double the number from a decade ago, according to the National Institutes of Health. Nearly as many meditate, according to the N.I.H.

Buddhist Meditation: A Management Skill? National Public Radio 3:57. A handful of executive MBA programs around the country — from Harvard to Michigan's Ross School of Business — are teaching students Buddhist meditation techniques. It's not necessarily about teaching spirituality, but focus. There's no way to quantify whether learning how to be centered during a stressful business meeting is balancing the bottom lines at companies. But students say slowing down does help them be more effective.  

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Meditation by phone found effective for corporations. Findings suggest that a meditation program delivered via phone can be a low cost, feasible, and scalable intervention that shows positive impact on health and well-being, and could allow meditation to be delivered to employees who are otherwise unable to access traditional, on-site programs.

Changes in physician costs among high-cost transcendental meditation practitioners compared with high-cost nonpractitioners over 5 years.

Yoga and Meditation Based Programs Reduce Employee Stress. Mindfulness-based and therapeutic yoga programs may provide viable and effective interventions to target high stress levels, sleep quality, and autonomic balance in employees.

Qigong reduces stress in computer operators.

Qigong training and effects on stress, neck-shoulder pain and life quality in a computerised office environment.

10 week worksite yoga program improves flexibility, reduces stress and increases musculoskeletal fitness

MIndfulness and yoga reduce workplace stress. Mind-body interventions showed significant improvements on perceived stress, sleep quality, and the heart rhythm coherence ratio of heart rate variability. Both the mindfulness-based and therapeutic yoga programs provide viable and effective interventions to target high stress levels, sleep quality, and autonomic balance in employees.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction for managers: a randomized controlled study. These results suggest that MBSR is an effective method for managing work-related stress and bolstering psychological resilience in the workplace, particularly in the face of psychosocial risks of a global, economic nature.

At Germany's SAP, employee mindfulness leads to higher profits. 

SAP logo on wall

At SAP, mindfulness is part of a broader push to tackle stress and improve employee health that it says is resulting in higher profits. SAP declines to detail how much it is spending on mindfulness but says it has seen a 200 percent return on investment, with the training leading to a rise in employee engagement and a fall in absenteeism. More.

Harvard Medical School Recommends Tai Chi

"Time spent practicing Tai Chi makes your time at work more focused and creative, helps you manage stress, makes your interactions with coworkers more efficient, and gives you the energy to work longer, more productive hours...Employers all across the nation are recognizing just how important a heathy workplace and a healthy workforce are improving productivity as well as to controlling health-care costs... wellness programs have achieved a rate of return on investment that ranges from $3 to $15 for each dollar invested, with savings realized within 12 to 18 months."The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi.

pubmed logoHow breathing can help you make better decisions: Two studies on the effects of breathing patterns on heart rate variability and decision-making in business cases. Deep slow breathing (e.g. during the practice of Qigong) can increase vagal nerve activity, indexed by heart rate variability (HRV). These studies show that brief vagal breathing patterns reliably increase HRV and improve decision-making.

Mindfulness and sleep can reduce exhaustion in entrepreneurs.

Technology and Mindfulness. "the problem behind our unbearable stress levels and the root cause of most of it lies in our mind. We never think about this, but our inability to understand and manage an ongoing stream of thoughts is the root cause our daily suffering. And this prevents us from living a good quality personal life, and to perform with balance at work."

UCSD Brings Mindfulness to the Workplace.The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness has launched a WorkLife Integration Program for companies that would like to help their employees reduce stress, increase focus and improve productivity. The convenient in-house training program is designed for companies of all sizes and for employees of all organizational levels. Program options include lunch-and-learn presentations, introductory mindfulness training workshops, the flagship 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction experience and programs customized to specific organizational goals.

Benefits of mindfulness at work: the role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction.

Meditation finds an ommm in the office. Managers are promoting mental-awareness techniques to help employees cut stress and improve communication. And executives are finding meditation helps them stay cool under fire.

 

Yoga can help improve employee wellbeing. This is a very good introduction to the benefits of yoga.

A profitable calm: Meditation for investors and traders. Meditation is fast becoming a standard part of business training and practice. Top business schools are including meditation courses, and meditation rooms and workshops are a routine part of company cultures. Investors and traders, whose business is buying and selling risk, benefit from meditation in ways that can transform not only their profitability, but their ability to enjoy their work and the life it makes possible.

Want a Better Work-Life Balance? Exercise, Study Finds. Unlike just mindfulness practice, Qigong includes physical exercise.

pubmed logoFifteen minutes of chair-based yoga postures or guided meditationperformed in the office can reduce physiological and psychological stress.

Buddhist Meditation: A Management Skill? A handful of executive MBA programs around the country — from Harvard to Michigan's Ross School of Business — are teaching students Buddhist meditation techniques. It's not necessarily about teaching spirituality, but focus. There's no way to quantify whether learning how to be centered during a stressful business meeting is balancing the bottom lines at companies. But students say slowing down does help them be more effective.

pubmed logoMeditation Can Reduce Health Care CostsChanges in physician costs among high-cost transcendental meditation practitioners compared with high-cost nonpractitioners over 5 years.

pubmed logoEffective and Viable Mind-Body Stress Reduction in the Workplace: A Randomized Controlled Trial. 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.

Henderson Smith
Living Well Therapies

Living Well Therapies

Worksite wellness.