Essential elements in evidence-based interventions to improve employee mindfulness

Abstract

The use of mindfulness skill promises a bevy of positive outcomes at work, increasing organizational interest in designing interventions for boosting it. To create these interventions, organizations need more information on key elements that support mindfulness and deeper understanding about how each element mechanizes deployment of mindfulness skill. This manuscript addresses these needs. We articulate how the micro mindfulness skills of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (identified as the “S-ART framework” by neuropsychologists) emerge and combine to create a state of mindfulness. We then provide an example to demonstrate how including each of these elements in a mindfulness intervention provides employees with a stepwise self-management technique for better interacting with distressing or uncomfortable cognition. In all, we demonstrate how mindfulness interventions that incorporate self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence create a more robust state of mindfulness.