Techniques to strengthen entrepreneurship: is mindfulness a useful concept for resilience development?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to increase the resilience capacity of residential health-care professionals to achieve intrapreneurial development in workers. Through training based on the development of emotional competencies and the application of mindfulness techniques, the aim is for the individual to become aware of his or her role, learn to manage emotions and reduce feelings of distress and anxiety. Design/methodology/approach The proposed programme has a duration of eight weeks. Every four days of training, mindfulness sessions are integrated, and at the beginning and end of the working day, 10 min are spent with superiors to give feedback on what happened during the day and the setting of new objectives. A control group is also established where they do not undergo such training. After the delivery of the programme, the results obtained after the application of the methodology to a sample of 91 residential health-care professionals are presented. By means of a validated resilience questionnaire composed of 25 items, the aim is to measure the resilience capacity of the participants before and after training and to observe the impact of the programme. Findings The results of this study show that the training has led to an improvement in the overall resilience capacity by 3.93% and has been able to reduce the existing gap between those over 45 years of age and younger people, although the age-related variable still represents a significant difference. Originality/value This study provides an innovative way of fostering entrepreneurship. While participants work on resilience management through mindfulness techniques, organisational commitment is achieved.