Top 6 Tips for a Successful Corporate Mindfulness Program:

By: Nathalie Heynderickx and Zen Goh

Congratulations!

After many meetings and some serious lobbying, you have secured the budget for your first Corporate Mindfulness Program. Well done.

Now, the pressure is ON and it’s time to carefully plan the initiative so you can deliver the results you promised to the executive team in your business case.

Read on to find out the Top 6 Tips for a Successful Corporate Mindfulness Program:

1. Sponsorship

Make sure to engage your senior leadership team from day one. Getting a video or some type of comms from your CEO or head of division supporting the program is essential, so employees feel they have formal permission to join the program and attend sessions.

2. Partner

Be careful selecting your provider. Do your due diligence. Make sure they have the appropriate qualifications and corporate experience, ideally in your industry. For more tips on how to choose your business partner for your corporate mindfulness training initiative read our article Top 5 Tips to select a Corporate Mindfulness Training Provider.

3. Pilot

Start small. Up to 20 participants max. Ideally an intact team so the cultural impact can be measured. Selecting a team which is facing performance or wellbeing challenges can be beneficial if members are open and willing. Once you have a successful pilot under your belt it will be easier to extend your business case and secure budget to roll out the initiative to other teams in the organisation.

4. Volunteers

Participants for your first pilot should (ideally) be volunteers, self-selected. Not told to attend by their managers. This will maximize their engagement, the quality of exchanges among attendees and chances to move the needle in terms of their own performance and wellbeing.

5. Duration

If you are invested in transforming the organisation culture or at least supporting a team to develop new desired behaviors, please consider carefully the duration of your program. In our experience cultural changes require time and a minimum of 5 weeks is needed in order to obtain tangible results.

6. Metrics

Make sure to identify the key objectives of the program and tailor a pre and post-program survey so you can collect hard data and facts to present to your sponsor by the end of the program and hopefully secure budget for rolling out the program to the rest of the organisation.

Take action:

1. Reflect on the top 3 challenges your organisation is currently facing.
2. Start identifying potential champions that could work with your training partner to support the program. If your organisation run yoga classes at lunch time for example, that could be a fantastic place to start your recruitment for a mindfulness champion!

For additional information, please read Ingram (2015).

Ingram, L. (2015). Workplace mindfulness inventions: What are the benefits, when are they appropriate, and how can organizations optimise the transfer of training?. European Work and Organizational Psychology in Practice, 7, 86-98.