In 2006, the Melbourne entrepreneur James Tutton, founder of the Moonlight Cinema Group, began to recognise his own children’s stress as they prepared for their NAPLAN tests. In response he developed a meditation program called Smiling Mind, which is now used in 4500 Australian schools and some key companies such as IBM Australia and Google. The program applies the concept of ‘mindfulness’, which Tutton describes as making people more aware of their own emotions and getting people ‘to focus on far more positive things than work, work, work and not doing anything else’.

Professor Amanda Sinclair teaches mindfulness as part of the Melbourne Business School MBA program and executive workshops and says that mindfulness is about paying attention and being present in the present moment without judgment. She also describes mindfulness as being about teaching staff about meditation and how to regulate their thoughts. Key aspects of this include slowing down thoughts, staying mindful during meetings and stepping away from the clutter in your head to be fully present in a situation. At the end of the day mindfulness allows for greater productivity, creativity and more harmonious workplaces. It also provides clarity, hence Sinclair suggests that one of the most powerful things we can learn from being mindful is that stress isn’t caused by what happens to us, but how we process it and how it influences us. By becoming more aware of the ways of thinking that contribute to stress, we are able to establish coping mechanisms. Mindfulness can help an individual to release the past and live in the present as well as slow the heart rate. As Olivia Downing, mindfulness consultant, says ‘Our thoughts often go to the past which can be tainted by guilt and shame, and mindfulness encourages us to turn up and live for the present and for us.’

IBM Australia and New Zealand have been pioneering the use of mindfulness in the corporate sector bringing focus and clarity to employee’s tasks. Anna Phillips, IBM’s People and Change leader describes how this is achieved through a range of practices to tackle workplace stress and promote positive leadership and resilience, including developing responsive capabilities among HR staff. After significant experimentation with mindfulness in leadership training, not only were management teams healthier but interaction between management and workers was improved. Furthermore, National Australia Bank with its 43 000 employees is also facing growing stress in the workplace. Michela Healey, NAB People, Communications and Governance Group Executive, describes how ‘Like any large employer if people are not able to be their best or their work is impacted, that has an impact on service’.

A recent VicHealth funded study further highlights the importance of mindfulness programs within the corporate sector revealing that job strain‐attributable depression and stress takes $730 million out of the Australian economy each year. In addition, SafeWork Australia’s 2009–10 study showed that mental stress was the highest cost of all workers’ compensation. Even more worryingly, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Work‐related Injuries Survey 2009–10 revealed that 70 per cent of work‐related mental stress sufferers failed to claim workers compensation. The study also shows that since 2010/11 the modern economy is suffering from psychological effects created by 24-7 working environments, around the clock accessibility and tablet and smartphone usage. Peter Cotton, a clinical and organisational psychologist, says the first step must be to identify stress; this could be done by HR personnel who can assess the interaction between staff and management and can tackle stress in a variety of ways beyond just assistance programs and GP visits’.

QUESTIONS

1. How could mindfulness help a company become more efficient and effective? Provide two examples to demonstrate this.

2. What challenges would be faced in introducing mindfulness into an organisation?