A low‐dose mindfulness intervention and recovery from work: Effects on psychological detachment, sleep quality, and sleep duration

Abstract

Although playing a crucial role for the prevention of long-term health impairment, interventions aiming at the improvement of employees' recovery processes are still scarce. In this study, we therefore investigated the effectiveness of a low-dose mindfulness intervention for recovery from work. In addition, differential responding to the treatment in terms of treatment-by-baseline interactions was studied. A sample of 140 employees participated in a randomized field experiment with a self-training and a wait-list control group. Three central recovery processes (psychological detachment, sleep quality, and sleep duration) were assessed with event-sampling methodology involving daily measurements over 10 workdays. Growth curve analyses revealed intervention effects on sleep quality and sleep duration. No effects were found for psychological detachment after work and for the proposed treatment-by-baseline interactions. Our findings are discussed in the context of occupational health promotion in general and mindfulnessbased interventions in specific. Practitioner pointsAlthough daily recovery from the demands of work has been shown to be vital for employee well-being and performance, research on how workplace interventions can help improve recovery is still scarce. This study investigated the effectiveness of a brief, economic mindfulness intervention on processes that are vital for recovery -psychological detachment, sleep quality, and sleep duration. Findings revealed positive effects of the intervention on sleep quality and duration, but not on psychological detachment.

Mindfulness as substitute for transformational leadership

“…The finding that mindfulness, which is considered to be a trainable metacognitive skill (Hülsheger et al, 2013(Hülsheger et al, , 2015Shapiro et al, 2007), is also able to compensate for a low levels of transformational leadership is an important contribution to the substitutes for leadership theory (Kerr and Jermier, 1978;Podsakoff et al, 1996), providing actionable strategies for organizations seeking to foster employees' intrinsic motivation. Future research could examine to what extent mindfulness is indeed another aspect of psychological capital (Youssef and Luthans, 2007) that makes employees less in need of an external leader (Manz and Sims, 1980).…”

“…Providing mindfulness training to their employees is a relatively small investment for organizations to realize a more motivated and proactive workforce. Even simple and short interventions focusing on meditation techniques in work contexts (Hülsheger et al, 2013(Hülsheger et al, , 2015 or short web-based programs that combine live, weekly hour-long virtual classes with accompanying online applied training have shown promising results (Aikens et al, 2014). Mindfulness-based mobile apps may have potential as an alternative delivery medium for training (Mani et al, 2015).…”

Internet-based instructor-led mindfulness for work-related rumination, fatigue, and sleep: Assessing facets of mindfulness as mechanisms of change. A randomized waitlist control trial.

“…It has also been shown to confer benefits on various wellbeing 3 related outcomes; for example, coping capabilities, purposefulness in life and the experience of positive emotions (e.g., Fredrickson et al, 2008). With regard to occupational health, mindfulness has been shown to be effective in: reducing daily hassles, psychological distress, and medical symptoms (Williams, Kolar, Reger, & Pearson, 2001;Dane, 2011); reducing emotional exhaustion and improving job satisfaction (Hulsheger et al, 2013); increasing employee engagement (Leroy, Anseel, Dimitrova, & Sels, 2013); improving sleep quality (Wolever, Bobinet, McCabe, Mackenzie, Fekete, Kusnick, et al, 2012;Hulsheger, Lang, Depenbrock, Fehrmann, Zijlstra, & Alberts, 2014;Hulsheger, Feinholdt, & Nubold, 2015); reducing perceived stress (Wolever et al, 2012); and increasing psychological detachment from work and satisfaction with work-life balance (Michel, Bosch, & Rexroth, 2014).…”

Making Sure That Mindfulness Is Promoted in Organizations in the Right Way and for the Right Goals

“…Accordingly, the research questions being addressed in extant studies (e.g., Allen & Kiburz, 2012;Dane & Brummel, 2014;Hafenbrack, Kinias, & Barsade, 2014;Hülsheger et al, 2013Hülsheger et al, , 2015Hülsheger et al, , 2014Leroy, Anseel, Dimitrova, & Sels, 2013;Marzuq & Drach-Zahavy, 2012;Michel et al, 2014;Reb, Narayanan, & Chaturvedi, 2014;Reb, Narayanan, & Ho, 2015;Wolever et al, 2012) may be roughly summarized as follows: What are the work-related consequences of employee mindfulness, and how can individual mindfulness be enhanced through training? Encouraged by the wealth of evidence on the salutary effects of mindfulness for individuals from the clinical and personality psychology literature, I-O practitioners and also researchers have predominantly focused on mindfulness at the level of the individual.…”