Authors: Divye Kartikey, Subodh Kumar
Abstract
Background: Workplace is an important place where an employee spends most of the time. The level of well-being and productivity an employee has depends on how well the stresses at the workplace are managed. As the stresses at the workplace are increasing and affecting the quality of life, it is important to study the effectiveness of mindfulness in mitigating stress and improving psychological well-being.
Aim: The aim of the study was to study the level of mindfulness and perceived stress between private sector and public sector employees.
Methods: A total of 156 participants, in which 96 were private sector employees and 60 were public sector employees. Tools: Five facets of mindfulness questionnaire was used to measure the level of mindfulness, and psychological general well-being index was used to assess the level of stress.
Results: The study has found that there was no statistical significant difference (p>.05) in mindfulness and psychological well-being between private sector employees and public sector employees. There was a significant positive correlation between mindfulness and psychological well being (r= .573,p< .01).
Conclusion: The study has concluded that mindfulness is an effective tool in improving psychological well being of employees. Effective mindfulness programmes should be designed and employees should be encouraged to participate in them.
Keywords: Mindfulness, Psychological well being, Private sector employees, Public sector employees
Introduction
Nowadays, in the era of competitive environment and toxic lifestyle, there are reports of stress, mental tension, anxiety, etc., among employees working in both private and public sector, which affects their psychological well-being. Workplace is an important place where an employee spends most of the time on daily basis but the stresses due to workplace has been a neglected aspect of mental health issues. This requires thorough studies so that possible interventions can be provided (Maulik, 2017). Research in psychology has started documenting the benefits of mindfulness and it is in this light it is important to evaluate the role of mindfulness in dealing with stress and psychological well-being at workplace.
Mindfulness is an old concept, which came from ancient eastern spiritual and cultural traditions out of their reflection and contemplation of meaning of life and suffering. According to Baer et al. (2006), mindfulness is non judgemental observation of internal and external stimuli. According to Bishop et al. (2004) mindfulness means ability to self-regulate attention from one aspect of an experience to another and also form and hold an attitude towards it.
Psychological well being is actually a journey of self-realization and consists of 6 aspects: Autonomy, Environmental mastery, self- acceptance, personal growth, positive relations and purpose in life. Studies have shown that high psychological well-being is related to good physical and mental health (Weiss et al., 2016).
Psychological well-being can be grouped into three types: evaluative well-being or life satisfaction, hedonic well being or feelings like happiness, everyday feelings and eudemonic well being or purpose in life. It is also dependent on other things like financial status and physical health. Studies have shown that as age increases people acquire a better understanding of life and hence their psychological well being increases (Steptoe et al., 2015).
The effect of mindfulness on stress was evaluated in a study on 717 adolescents, which showed that mindfulness has a negative correlation with psychological distress. (Parto & Besharat, 2011). In an experiment by Baer et al. (2008) two groups, who practised mindfulness and those who did not. were compared. It was found that those who practised mindfulness had reduced psychological problems, rumination and stress in comparison to the group which did not practice.
In a study by Ortner et al. (2007), an experiment was conducted to compare the amount of emotional interference between mindfulness practitioner and non mindfulness practitioner by presenting a sound of tone after showing an emotional or a neutral picture. The participants after seeing the picture had to react to the tone and this reaction time was noted to calculate emotional inference. Normally emotional pictures would reduce participants ability to react to the tones much more than neutral pictures due to emotional inference. However, it was found that groups that practiced mindfulness had less reaction time and hence much less emotional inference. Their ability to detach themselves from the emotional picture and react in time to the sound of the tones was the main highlight of the study.
Iwamoto et al. (2020) found that mindfulness significantly activates altruistic behavior. In the study 326 participants were assigned to two different groups. Participants of the first group were put into a mindfulness programme and the second was a control group. Participants of both the group were measured on their willingness to donate to a charity. The group which went through the mindfulness programme donated 2.61 times more than the control group.
A study on the impact of mindfulness on working memory was conducted by Jha et al. (2010). In the study, two groups of army personnel were formed. One group of army personnel was put on an eighth week programme in mindfulness and another was a control group. Both the group had been deployed in high stressful environments. It was found that the group which practised mindfulness had increased working memory capabilities.
Coo and Salanova (2018) conducted an experiment in which two groups were formed from a Spanish public hospital. The experiment group received a mindfulness based program, whereas the Control group was not given any mindfulness based intervention. Participants were evaluated on work management, happiness and performance before and after the mindfulness programme. It was found that the experiment group, which received mindfulness based programmes, showed high levels in all the above factors.
Study by Maya et al. (2019) showed the effect of mindfulness on depression. In this experiment 36 Spanish speaking and 40 English speaking participants, suffering from moderate levels of stress, were taken and were randomly distributed into two groups. One group was put on mindfulness based awareness practice and another group was provided with health education. Depression between both the groups was measured. It was found that the group which was put on mindfulness based awareness practices had improved symptoms of depression than the group which was provided health education only.
A study by Chambers et al. (2008) on the effect of mindfulness on factors like rumination, attention and working memory was done. In this, a group of 20 participants was put into a mindfulness programme for 10 days and were evaluated before and after the programme. The study concluded that the Mindfulness programme produced significant improvements in mindfulness, rumination, functioning of working memory and attention.
Role of Mindfulness in managing stresses of relationship was studied in a short term longitudinal design by recruiting 82 dating students from a university. Relevant constructs like mindfulness and relationship satisfaction were measured two times with the gap of 10 weeks in between. The finding of the study was that on both the occasions of measurement there was a significant relationship between mindfulness and relationship satisfaction (Barnes et al., 2007). [Full Text]
