It’s time for HR to think more broadly about wellbeing, says Dr Tamara Russell
With workplace stress and presenteeism on the rise, businesses are increasingly receptive to less conventional methods for improving staff wellbeing – as the burgeoning interest in mindfulness illustrates. There remains an element of scepticism in some quarters about a discipline that encourages participants to spend more time in the ‘present moment’ and take a greater interest in their emotional and physical responses. But practitioner and neuroscientist Dr Tamara Russell, author of Mindfulness in Motion, says her studies demonstrate its effectiveness. She tells People Management why HR professionals should take a closer look at how this self-awareness technique can bring relief to burned-out employees.
What’s the case for using mindfulness for stress reduction?
It works by encouraging people to consciously monitor the reactions and feelings in their body. This helps us to pay attention to the pacing of our speech, our day, our lives – and to think about the speed we are doing things and make an effort to slow down. It allows us to have a different perspective on our experience, including the causes of stress. My approach is influenced by my background in kung fu. In the Karate Kid films, the theory is that kung fu is in everything you do – for mindfulness, this translates into weaving the technique into your everyday life rather than sitting on a cushion meditating for 45 minutes.
What results have you seen from your research?
I’ve worked with small groups of people, which included healthy individuals and some with mild mental health problems. The key thing participants reported was an increase in body awareness [interoception]. This is important because we’ve got a real issue in our society where people live in their heads and their smartphones. Mindfulness allows us to be more gentle and listen to the pains in the neck, back and hips, for example. This gives us a choice to walk around for a bit and reduce the tension.
Why should HR take this more seriously?
Mindfulness helps people have more self-compassion, and neuroscience shows us that the brain works better when it is in a calm, unstressed state. However, encouraging staff to work less because they’ll work better is a hard sell for corporates. It needs a really enlightened leader and organisation to support it on a larger scale. Google is already leading on this and in the US it offers mindfulness training as standard. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) regularly speaks at the Googleplex campus, using neuroscience to explain how and why it works, which gets their techie people involved.
Dr Tamara Russell will speak at the Mind and Matter conference in London on 3-4 December: mindandmatter2015.com