Will Meditation at Work Become a Thing?

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as a wellness program at work.  Even though there were a lot of health and wellness people saying health and wellness should be supported at work, work did not care, so work did not have wellness programs. 

Then, work began to notice that lots of dollars were being thrown at health problems related to unhealthy workers, and work started to care about health.  Hence, workplace wellness programs were born. 

Flash forward to now and you’re hard pressed to find a company without some kind of wellness plan in place.  In fact, 92% of larger companies have wellness programs.  HR departments have wellness budgets, even wellness specialists!  And, as employees get fatter, sicker and unhealthier, these wellness programs must expand and grow to combat the ever-skyrocketing cost of health care and all things related to employees being unhealthy.

While smoking cessation and weight loss have been the prevalent wellness programs in recent years, there is a new (really not so new) health concern rocking the HR world, and it’s wreaking havoc on health care costs, absenteeism, employee turnover and productivity. 

Stress 

Stress is killing work.  Not only is it making people sick, depressed and anxious, but the higher stress levels rise, the lower employee engagement plummets.  Disengaged employees are poor producers.  That is a one-two punch to the gut of the bottom line, and bad news for work.

Guess what?  Now work cares about stress, so work must find ways to reduce it.  Enter, meditation! 

There have been over 1,000 scientific papers written about the benefits of meditation in the past twenty years.  Research shows meditation reduces stress and improves mental, emotional, and physical health.  Additionally, Harvard Business School has stated, “The two most effective business tools for twenty-first century executives are meditation and intuition.”

Many companies across the country have launched stress reduction initiatives such as meditation instruction and support, with good results.  The trend is catching on and gaining in popularity.  Since stress has been identified as the number one contributor to illness, it must be dealt with.  So yes, meditation at work will become a thing.  It’s well on its way.