The impact of mindfulness on well-being and performance in the workplace: an inclusive systematic review of the empirical literature

Abstract

Work can be demanding, imposing challenges that can be detrimental to the physical and mental health of workers. Efforts are therefore underway to develop practices and initiatives that may improve occupational wellbeing. These include interventions based on mindfulness meditation. This paper offers a systematic review of empirical studies featuring analyses of mindfulness in occupational contexts. Databases were reviewed from the start of records to January 2016. Eligibility criteria included experimental and correlative studies of mindfulness conducted in work settings, with a variety of wellbeing and performance measures. 153 papers met the eligibility criteria and were included in the systematic review, comprising 12,571 participants. Mindfulness was generally associated with positive outcomes in relation to most measures. However, the quality of the studies was inconsistent, so further research is needed, particularly involving high-quality randomised control trials.

Contemplative interventions and employee distress: A meta‐analysis

“…Numerous reviews of mindfulness and meditation studies have been conducted to assess their impact on physical and mental health across general populations, on clinical and medical samples, and in students (e.g., Chiesa & Serretti, ; Grossman et al, ; Khoury et al, ; Khoury, Sharma, Rush, & Fournier, ). Similar growth has occurred in organizational applications in both mixed‐employee samples (e.g., Lomas, Medina, Ivtzan, Rupprecht, & Eiroa&Orosa, ; Virgili, ) and within specific occupational industries, including health care (e.g., Burton, Burgess, Dean, Koutsopoulou, & Hugh‐Jones, ; Lomas, Medina, Ivtzan, Rupprecht, & Eiroa‐Orosa, , ; Luken & Sammons, ; Smith, ) and education (e.g., Hwang, Bartlett, Greben, & Hand, ; Klingbeil & Renshaw, ; Lomas, Medina, Ivtzan, Rupprecht, & Eiroa‐Orosa, ).…”

“…Still, reviews have identified several important issues that warrant further attention, several of which we address in the present study. First, reviews suggest a lack of methodological rigour (see Eby et al, in press; Jamieson & Tuckey, ; Janssen et al, ; Lomas et al, ). Common issues include inattention to intervention fidelity, poorly controlled studies lacking in internal and external validity, absent manipulation checks, and inadequate reporting.…”

“…It can also reduce the variability across effect sizes within a literature due to the unavailability of small and low effect‐size studies (Schmidt & Oh, ), making the detection of moderating variables more difficult. Compounding this issue further is the substantial proportion of pilot studies utilizing single‐sample designs that lack comparison groups (Jamieson & Tuckey, ; Lomas et al ). Given their smaller size, such designs are typically less resource intensive and less onerous on the researcher than carefully controlled designs, which means they are in more danger of becoming “lost” to the proverbial file drawer if small effects are observed (Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, ).…”

“…Finally, prior systematic reviews find considerable heterogeneity in the intervention protocols used across studies. In their inclusive qualitative review of the workplace literature, for instance, Lomas et al () demonstrated that the range of intervention protocols were highly variable, with many studies making alterations to well‐known and standardized treatment protocols such as MBSR and MBCT. Many others used lesser known variants of mindfulness‐based interventions, with as many as 25 different variants of mindfulness‐based training observed.…”

“…This lack of agreement has led to a number of idiosyncratic disparities in the studies that have been included in prior reviews. As examples, Jamieson and Tuckey () included Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek and Finkel's () loving kindness meditation study, whereas this study was excluded from other reviews (e.g., Eby et al, in press; Lomas et al ). Some mindfulness reviews (e.g., Eby et al, in press; Jamieson & Tuckey, ; Lomas et al ) included Shonin et al's () meditation awareness training study or ACT (Flaxman & Bond, ), whereas other mindfulness reviews (e.g., Janssen et al, ; Virgili, ) excluded these interventions.…”