DOL Overtime Rule Will Impact Hospitality Industry
Originally Posted by SHRM.org
By: Allen Smith
The hospitality industry will be hit hard by the Department of Labor’s updates to the overtime rule implementing the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), experts say. With high overhead costs and a low-profit margin, hotels and restaurants typically don’t have enough money in reserve to give employees big raises to preserve their exempt status or to pay many hours of overtime if employees are eligible.
As a result, hospitality employers will need to explore alternative compensation models, schedules and staffing options to try to mitigate costs, according to Ryan Glasgow, an attorney with Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Va.
Some choices will be simple, he noted. For employees with relatively high salaries who work long hours, the logical choice is to increase their salaries, as the minimum increase in salary likely will be less than the employer would have to pay in substantial overtime hours. As for employees with low salaries who don’t work much overtime, it makes sense to convert them to nonexempt and pay overtime for the few overtime hours they might work.
“For all other employees, the decision will be much more difficult and will require a lot of strategic planning and analysis,” Glasgow said. “For example, in certain circumstances, it may be feasible for the employer to combine two exempt positions into one position so that the cost of increasing the salary for the remaining one employee is offset by the cost-savings from the elimination of the other employee’s position.”
He added that it may be better for the employer to convert a position to nonexempt and hire more employees to perform the work so that none of the employees work overtime. “Similarly, employers should evaluate each impacted position to determine whether there are unnecessary and/or inefficient tasks that can be eliminated or given to another employee so that the position requires fewer hours of work, thus lowering the impact of paying overtime,” he noted.
Domino Effect
Be aware of the potential domino effect when an employee’s salary is increased above the new salary level. The employee and the employee’s supervisor may suddenly be making similar salaries. Supervisors may ask for an increase as well, leading to salary increases up the organizational chart, Glasgow said.
Bonus and commission plans will have to be re-evaluated since there may be overtime pay consequences if employees who have been converted to nonexempt are paid bonuses or commissions, noted Robert Boonin, an attorney with Dykema in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich., and immediate past chair of the Wage and Hour Defense Institute, a network of wage and hour lawyers.
Rule’s Potential Winners
Salaried workers earning less than $913 a week or $47,476 annually and who regularly work more than 40 hours per week stand to gain from the overtime rule, said Wendy Stryker, an attorney with Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz in New York City. These workers will have their salaries raised above the new threshold, be paid overtime or have their hours reduced to a 40-hour workweek, she said. These employees include entry and midlevel professionals, such as chefs, sommeliers, and hotel or restaurant managers and assistant managers, she added.
The hospitality industry has a lot of employees earning in this range, according to Stryker. She noted that the average U.S. wage for chefs, head cooks and pastry chefs is $45,920. For bakers, the average U.S. wage is lower, at $26,270, Stryker noted.
While workers may benefit from the overtime rule, Michael Layman, vice president, regulatory affairs for the International Franchise Association in Washington, D.C., said the overtime rule will hit the hospitality industry particularly hard. Its employers “disproportionately face unpredictable season- or weather-dependent schedules and variable labor demands, which makes tracking hours and managing overtime costs a significant challenge,” he said.
“Given the need for onsite guest services, employers in the hospitality industry may have less flexibility than other employers to automate or offshore operations,” said Nancy Vary, director of the compliance consulting center at Xerox HR Services in New York City.
However, Carolyn Richmond, an attorney with Fox Rothschild in New York City, said, “I think we will see the live reservationist all but disappear as reliance on [online booking apps] OpenTable, Resy and the others grows.” She added, “Owners are looking at more and more automation—programs that monitor and control labor costs and even how to replace certain employees.”
Other Significantly Affected Industries
Hospitality isn’t the only industry to feel the brunt of the new overtime rule.
“The construction and retail industries will be impacted significantly because, like the hospitality industry, they have unusually high concentrations of low-salaried managers,” Glasgow said. He also expected large research and educational hospitals to be uniquely impacted because they have many low-salaried professionals.
“Any industry that has traditionally offered low pay to its skilled workers is likely to be hard-hit by the new overtime rules,” Stryker said. “In New York City, this is likely to be the creative industries such as advertising and film/television production, where hours are traditionally long, and the work product cannot necessarily be created on a 40-hour-per-week schedule.”
The point of the rule isn’t to benefit employers, though. “The new overtime rules were created to benefit employees,” Stryker said. “As the president noted when he directed the Department of Labor to update the relevant regulations, the FLSA’s overtime protections “are a linchpin of the middle class, and the failure to keep the salary level requirement for the white-collar exemption up to date has left millions of low-paid salaried workers without this basic protection.”
That said, Richmond noted that “While the Department of Labor hopes and expects these changes will lead to increased wages through overtime, I don’t expect that to be the case in [the hospitality] industry. Payroll has already risen dramatically with minimum wage increases and resulting wage compression, and owners will spend more time looking at controlling overtime.”
Allen Smith, J.D., is the manager of workplace law content for SHRM. Follow him @SHRMlegaleditor.
- See more at: https://shrm.org/legalissues/federalresources/pages/hospitality-industry-weighs-options-in-wake-of-overtime-rule.aspx#sthash.D3BGAwvR.dpuf
What Percentage of Your Life Will You Spend Exercising?
Original post benefitspro.com
How much of your life will you spend exercising?
Reebok and Censuswide, a global consulting firm, studied exercise habits of people in nine different countries and came to the conclusion that the average person spends 0.69 percent of their life working out.
Or, as the shoe company chose to frame it: Of the 25,915 days the average human lives, only 180 will be spent on fitness. “25,915” is the name of Reebok’s new brand campaign focused on encouraging exercise.
To be sure, “fitness” is not the same as physical activity. Manual laborers throughout the world burn calories effectively without ever getting a gym membership. Reebok acknowledges that fact, pointing out that the average person still walks or runs the equivalent of the Earth’s circumference nearly twice in their lifetime.
But in an increasingly mechanized world in which more and more workers spend their days in offices, it is more important than ever for people to make a conscious effort to get exercise.
"As a brand dedicated to promoting and supporting health and fitness around the world, we felt compelled to shine a light on the disparities between what we may aspire to achieve and what we're willing to do about it," said Yan Martin, vice president of brand management at Reebok. "It gives us a renewed urgency to get out there and live fuller, healthier lives. If we all traded in 30 minutes of phone time for a jog, we could actually help change the dynamics of global wellness."
To highlight the point, Reebok calculated that 41 percent of the average person’s life is spent engaging with technology. That amounts to 10,625 days in a lifetime.
In addition, the average person will spend 29.75 percent of his life sitting down, 6.8 percent socializing with a loved one, and 0.45 percent having sex.
Wellness Programs Benefit Employers, Employees
Original post benefitspro.com
Offering employee wellness programs isn’t just an exercise in altruism for employers. It pays off where most companies would value it most: the bottom line.
According to Forbes, companies are jumping on the wellness program bandwagon right and left, to varying degrees. In fact, Society for Human Resource Management statistics indicate that in 2015, 80 percent of employers offered preventive wellness resources and educational information, with 70 percent providing full strategic wellness programs.
But while companies are happy that such programs pay off in healthier employees — 59 percent of employers offering such programs believe they’ve resulted in improved worker health — those programs also pay off in ways that have more to do with the balance sheet than the scales.
The cost of wellness programs is nothing to be sneezed at, but on the other hand, employees involved in them often shift their diets to healthier foods, quit smoking, have a better mental outlook on life, and watch the pounds come off through diet and exercise. That means they’re less likely to have to take so much advantage of company-provided health plans, if they’re reducing or eliminating some of the risk factors that could send them to the doctor more often.
Healthy employees might exercise more and weigh less, but they’re also more engaged, and thus more productive. Better health can also keep them on the job longer, with better results and better job satisfaction. They’re less stressed, miss fewer days at work and don’t look for a new job as often; all those things add up to an 8 percent improvement in productivity.
All of that can translate, for most programs, to dollars and cents: a return on investment of approximately 3:1. It can, however, go as high as 6:1, thanks to reduced health care costs that result when workers are eating better, exercising more, and forestalling some of the conditions that can result in mega health care bills — and equally mega premiums.
Americans Don't Do Much to Avoid Hearing Loss
Original post benefitspro.com
Have you ever even heard of healthy hearing habits?
If not, you’re probably not alone. Relatively few Americans appear to pay much attention to their ears, according to a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of EPIC Hearing Healthcare.
The survey found that only a quarter of U.S. adults have had their hearing checked in the past two years.
In contrast, nearly two-thirds of Americans make a trip to the dentist at least annually. Three-quarters wear some type of corrective lens — either glasses or contact lenses — to address poor eyesight.
The survey also revealed that very few understand the risks to hearing presented by a number of different conditions and behaviors, including diabetes (22 percent) and smoking (14 percent).
Granted, it’s hard to believe that evidence showing how smoking harms hearing would be the game-changer that gets people to quit their habit, considering that people are more than aware of the other substantial health risks linked to tobacco use.
But overall hearing health would likely improve if the topic was more often emphasized by physicians and other health experts. According to EPIC, only 8 percent of employer-based wellness programs include hearing health.
But according to EPIC, only one in five people who would benefit from hearing aids actually have them. Even worse, people who don’t discuss hearing issues with their doctors often do not adopt habits to prevent hearing loss.
Hearing loss is often a problem that snowballs, explains EPIC. Dr. William Luxford, medical director of House Clinic. He says that people who begin to lose their hearing engage in behavior that exacerbates the problem, such as turning up the volume on their TV.
“A lot of people aren’t aware how important preventive care is for their hearing health,” he says. “Regular, comprehensive hearing exams by an audiologist are the best way to establish a baseline for your hearing and ensure any hearing loss is caught early so further damage can be prevented or minimized and hearing can be improved as quickly as possible.”
Study Suggests Plan Transparency Doesn’t Reduce Costs
Original post benefitspro.com
“Transparency” and “choice” are keywords associated with health plan consumers these days. But there’s no guarantee those key words will lead to the keyword phrase “lower health plan costs.”
One survey of the employees of two large employers reports that, given transparency and choice, plan members did not reduce their costs, and even increased them a bit.
As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a Harvard-led study of plan member choices showed that when employees spent more time reviewing plan options, they did not necessarily choose a cheaper plan. The study compared two groups of employees — one with a plan that included a price transparency/comparison tool, and another that did not.
The end result: The group with the transparency tool at its disposal spent slightly more (about $59 per member) on a plan in 2012 than in 2011. The control group with no tool spent about $18 more.
However, the study included a big caveat: “Only a small percentage of eligible employees” used the tool.
Such studies can offer some value to the overall discussion of reducing health costs. However, this study’s small focus (employees of two companies), when it took place (before comparison tools had truly entered the health plan lexicon), and the relatively few folks who used it, probably suggests that perhaps it could be used as the starting point for a broader study based upon more recent data.
5 Crucial Wellness Strategies for Self-Funded Companies
Original post careatc.com
Instead of paying pricey premiums to insurers, self-insured companies pay claims filed by employees and health care providers directly and assume most of the financial risk of providing health benefits to employees. To mitigate significant losses, self-funded companies often sign up for a special “stop loss” insurance, hedging against very large or unexpected claims. The result? A stronger position to stabilize health care costs in the long-term. No wonder self-funded plans are on the rise with nearly 81% of employees at large companies covered.
Despite the rise in self-insured companies, employers are uncertain as to whether they’ll even be able to afford coverage in the long-term given ACA regulations. Now more than ever, employers (self-insured or not) must understand that wellness is a business strategy. High-performing companies are able to manage costs by implementing the most effective tactics for improving workforce health.
Here are five wellness strategies for self-insured companies:
Strategy 1: Focus on Disease Management Programs
Corporate wellness offerings generally consist of two types of programs: lifestyle management and disease management. The first focuses on employees with health risks, like smoking or obesity, and supports them in reducing those risks to ultimately prevent the development of chronic conditions. Disease management programs, on the other hand, are designed to help employees who already have chronic disease, encouraging them to take better care of themselves through increased access to low-cost generic prescriptions or closing communication gaps in care through periodic visits to providers who leverage electronic medical records.
According to a 2012 Rand Corporation study, both program types collectively reduced the employer’s average health care costs by about $30 per member per month (PMPM) with disease management responsible for 87% of those savings. You read that right – 87%! Looking deeper into the study, employees participating in the disease management program generated savings of $136 PMPM, driven in large part by a nearly 30% reduction in hospital admissions. Additionally, only 13% of employees participated in the disease management program, compared with 87% for the lifestyle management program. In other words, higher participation in lifestyle management programs marginally contributes to overall short-term savings; ROI was $3.80 for disease management but only $0.50 for lifestyle management for every dollar invested.
This isn’t to say that lifestyle management isn’t a worthy cause – employers still benefit from its long-term savings, reduced absenteeism, and improved retention rates – but it cannot be ignored that short-term ROI is markedly achieved through a robust disease management program.
Strategy 2: Beef Up Value-Based Benefits
Value-Based Benefit Design (VBD) strategies focus on key facets of the health care continuum, including prevention and chronic disease management. Often paired with wellness programs, VBD strategies aim to maximize opportunities for employees make positive changes. The result? Improved employee health and curbed health care costs for both employee and employer. Types of value-based benefits outlined by theNational Business Coalition on Health include:
Individual health competency where incentives are presented most often through cash equivalent or premium differential:
- Health Risk Assessment
- Biometric testing
- Wellness programs
Condition management where incentives are presented most often through co-pay/coinsurance differential or cash equivalent:
- Adherence to evidence-based guidelines
- Adherence to chronic medications
- Participation in a disease management program
Provider Guidance
- Utilization of a retail clinic versus an emergency room
- Care through a “center of excellence”
- Tier one high quality physician
There is no silver bullet when it comes to VBD strategies. The first step is to assess your company’s health care utilization and compare it with other benchmarks in your industry or region. The ultimate goal is to provide benefits that meet employee needs and coincide with your company culture.
Strategy 3: Adopt Comprehensive Biometric Screenings
Think Health Risk Assessments (HRAs) and Biometric Screenings are one and the same? Think again. While HRAs include self-reported questions about medical history, health status, and lifestyle, biometric screenings measure objective risk factors, such as body weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, stress, and nutrition. This means that by adopting a comprehensive annual biometric screening, employees can review results with their physician, create an action plan, and see their personal progress year after year. For employers, being able to determine potentially catastrophic claims and quantitatively assess employee health on an aggregate level is gold. With such valuable metrics, its no surprise that nearly 51% of large companies offer biometric screenings to their employees.
Strategy 4: Open or Join an Employer-Sponsored Clinic
Despite a moderate health care cost trend of 4.1% after ACA changes in 2013, costs continue to rise above the rate of inflation, amplifying concerns about the long-term ability for employers to provide health care benefits. In spite of this climate, there are still high-performing companies managing costs by implementing the most effective tactics for improving health. One key tactic? Offer at least one onsite health service to your population.
I know what you’re thinking: employer-sponsored clinics are expensive and only make sense for large companies, right? Not anymore. There are a few innovative models out there tailored to small and mid-size businesses that are self-funded, including multi-employer, multi-site sponsored clinics. Typically a large company anchors the clinic and smaller employers can join or a group of small employers can launch their very own clinic. There are a number of advantages to employer-sponsored clinics and it is worthwhile to explore if this strategy is right for your company.
Strategy 5: Leverage Mobile Technology
With thousands health and wellness apps currently available through iOS and Android, consumers are presented with an array of digital tools to achieve personal goals. So how can self-insured companies possibly leverage this range of mobile technology? From health gamification and digital health coaching, to wearables and apps, employers are inundated with a wealth of digital means that delivering a variation of virtually the same thing: measurable data.
These companies curate available consumer health and wellness technology to empower employers by simplifying the process of selecting and managing various app and device partners, and even connecting with tools employees are already be using.
Conclusion:
Self-insured companies have a vested interest in improving employee health and understand that wellness is indeed a business strategy. High-performing companies are able to manage costs by implementing the most effective tactics for improving workforce health including an increased focus on Chronic Disease Management programs; strengthening value-based benefit design; adopting comprehensive biometric screening; exploring the option of opening or joining an employer-sponsored clinic; and leveraging mobile technology.
Remote Workers Are Happier
Original post benefitspro.com
People who work remotely are happier, according to a new survey conducted by TinyPulse, an employee engagement firm.
The firm polled 509 U.S. workers who always work remotely about their job satisfaction and compared their responses to those of the roughly 200,000 U.S. employees the firm polls on a monthly basis.
On a scale of 1 to 10, remote workers report an average level of work happiness of 8.1, compared to 7.42 for other employees.
They may rarely see their colleagues and superiors, but remote workers also feel more valued by their employers. On that metric, they have an average score of 7.75, compared to 6.69 for other workers.
The one area in which remote employees come up short, unsurprisingly, is their relationships with colleagues. They rate their co-worker relationships at an average of 7.88, whereas conventional employees rate their ties to officemates 8.47.
The study by TinyPulse suggested strongly that the benefits of allowing employees to work outside of the office outweigh the risks.
Only 27 percent of the remote workers polled said they had experienced a problem due to not being in the same place as fellow employees. And 91 percent said they were more productive in their current arrangement than in an office context.
Another surprising finding: Those who work more days a week are the happiest.
In fact, remote employees who report working seven days a week, but shorter hours, were the most satisfied of all, with an average satisfaction rating of 8.49. The next happiest were those who worked sporadic hours throughout the week, with a rating of 8.12. Those who worked a typical, 9-5 schedule, came in third, at 7.88, just slightly ahead of those who worked consistent but unconventional schedules, such as nights or Sunday-Thursday.
Telecommuting and other flexible work arrangements are all the rage these days, particularly among Silicon Valley firms. Studies have suggested that employers who ease up on attendance and scheduling policies will have happier workers who are just as productive.
Many Employees Still Unaware of Free Preventive Care Benefits
Original post benefitspro.com
Even employees covered by an employer-sponsored health plan remain confused about the benefits that are free of charge to them under health care reform law. But employers say that they often don’t have the resources or effective communications tools to fully explain these benefits to the workforce.
This finding emerged from a small sample study by the Midwest Business Group on Health, which surveyed 53 workplaces, more than half of which had 5,000 or more employees in their plans.
The survey indicated that progress is being made: 62 percent said they were aware of all the free services, which include vaccinations, maternity and pregnancy related services, pediatric services and others. But another 36 percent admitted they weren’t aware of the full spectrum of these free benefits. (Just 2 percent pleaded complete ignorance of the benefits.)
The survey said that larger employers that often use participation incentives to increase benefits usage had higher rates of preventive service use compared to small- to mid-sized employers, with larger ones reporting about 60 percent participation and small-to-mid-sized around 50 percent. Overall, 53 percent said they offer such incentives.
“In addition,” the report said, “outside of the flu vaccination, survey respondents indicated they are not promoting important adult vaccinations, and for those that do, employee use is low.”
Digging deeper into the benefits available to workers, the study found that 58 percent of respondents offered vaccines only to those covered and their dependents. A small number — 42 percent — included retirees in the coverage.
The flu vaccine was far and away the most prevalent benefit for employers with onsite or near-site clinics, offered by 70 percent. Vaccinations for hepatitis B were the second most common, at 41 percent, with hepatitis A found in 39 percent of plans. Vaccinations for diseases such as HPV, shingles, pneumonia, measles and others were in the 27 percent to 37 percent range. Nearly half of plans (43 percent) covered all vaccinations costs.
Increasingly, larger employers, and even some with fewer employees, are turning to onsite service centers to encourage greater use of free preventive benefits. Nearly half reported having an onsite clinic, 21 percent said they use a near-site clinic, and 7 percent reported using a mobile van.
While overall, employers felt their benefits communications strategies were working fairly well, a major area where they are not finding success is in encouraging employees to choose a specific location to receive vaccines. This indicates that the employer-led national effort to attempt to steer workers to centers of excellence, or at least of cost efficiency, is not yet working well.
The MBGH has created a preventive benefits “toolkit” designed to help employers spread the word about free benefits and increase participation in them.
“Employers are the primary purchasers of health care for employees and families, so it’s important that these benefits are effectively understood and appropriately used,” said Larry Boress, MBGH president and CEO. “Otherwise, consumer engagement levels suffer, resulting in millions of benefit dollars being wasted each year. Many employers don’t know where to start or how to effectively communicate available preventive care benefits to their covered population. That’s why we’re launching an employer toolkit to help employers do a more effective job.”
Why Employers Should Consider Mindfulness Training as an Employee Benefit
Original post benefitsnews.com
Some previous blogs have noted the research supporting the benefits of mindfulness for both individual performance and workplace relationships. Research also finds that mindfulness improves employee well-being and resilience.
Resilience gained attention in the 1970s as psychologists and trauma researchers began to articulate the amazing ability of many people to bounce back following a devastating event, crisis or injury. Over time, researchers have identified the characteristics of resilient people, and have identified how to train people to develop skills to increase their resilience. Hence, resilience has evolved to reflect a coping style that allows someone to endure during difficult times and emerge more competent and skillful in dealing with challenges.
A growing body of evidence suggests that mindfulness is particularly important for developing resilience at work, through its effects on employee physical and psychological health, absenteeism, turnover, and in-role performance. Here are some of the findings:
- In workplace samples, mindfulness has been linked to reduced levels of reported burnout, perceived stress, work-family conflict, and negative moods, along with better sleep quality.
- In studies where employees were randomly assigned to a self-directed mindfulness intervention or a control group, those in the mindfulness intervention reported greater job satisfaction and less emotional exhaustion. Similar effects have been found in a range of occupations, including doctors, soldiers and teachers.
- Mindfulness has been linked to increased psychological capital and resilience in managers and entrepreneurs.
- Mindfulness training predicted employee engagement among employees at the Mayo Clinic. Additional studies have further shown that such engagement may be mediated by greater authenticity, positive emotions, hope and optimism.
Developing a formal mindfulness practice is thought to increase resilience in three ways:
1. Flexible cognition. Practicing mindfulness may actually rewire our brain circuitry, improving our ability to think flexibly, more easily perceiving different perspectives and generating novel solutions to problems. This same skill may allow one to observe potentially toxic workplace events while adopting a “decentered perspective,” making perceived stressors appear less threatening.
Imagine an employee witnesses verbal aggression directed at a fellow co-worker, which causes the employee to feel physiological reactivity and psychological stress. Experiencing the event with mindful attention could decouple this automatic link between the toxic experience and emotional reactivity, leaving them feeling less depleted. This reinterpretation of events actually starts to form new habits of thinking, which may involve perception of stressors as challenges that elicit growth, rather than as hindrances. In addition, application of mindfulness skills may elicit compassion for the fellow co-worker.
2. Growth in the face of adversity. Research shows that exposure to a threat without being overcome by that threat can result in higher levels of well-being than not experiencing the threat at all. In other words, experiencing but quickly recovering from workplace stress may indeed make an employee stronger.
So where does mindfulness fit in? Mindful individuals show an ability to perceive stressful and adverse situations from different angles, and demonstrate a willingness to behave more flexibly in response to them. As workers successfully experiment with new coping behaviors, they experience increased confidence and stronger self-efficacy, improving their ability to deal with many types of challenging situations and developing greater resilience.
3. Positive thinking. Positive emotions play a crucial role in one’s ability to recover physically from adverse events, as well to facilitate better emotion and behavior self-regulation. Mindfulness not only enhances regulation of negative emotions, but also cultivates positive emotions. It’s not that resilient people don’t experience negative emotions like anyone else; they do. Resilient people, however, do not dwell on them. Rather, they have learned how to use their attention and other internal resources to notice and amplify pleasant experiences and meaningful events as well.
To summarize, mindfulness may improve employee resilience by training the mind to reinterpret stressors as less personally threatening, empowering workers to take new perspectives and try new behaviors, which may actually result in growth in the face of challenges, and cultivating positive thinking, which is especially important during hardships. A new wave of resilience research is supporting the idea that mindfulness practice may lead to improved workplace outcomes like job satisfaction, retention, and employee health.
Workplace Mindfulness Training Benefits Extend Beyond Individuals
Original post benefitsnews.com
Much of the research demonstrating benefits of mindfulness practice – stable attention, reduced stress, emotional resilience, and improved performance at work – focus on the benefits for the individual practicing mindfulness. But the workplace benefits extend far beyond that: Mindfulness has a huge impact on relationships. We’ve seen this in our work at eMindful, and it’s supported by considerable scientific research.
Humans are relational by nature, and the quality of our relationships deeply influences our health and well-being. The importance of relationships in the work environment is no exception. Satisfaction and performance at work are strongly linked to one’s ability to work well in teams, develop leadership skills, communicate effectively and resolve conflict.
Teamwork
Team performance obviously relies on relationship skills, and mindfulness training that improves these skills affects both the experience and productivity of teams. One study of health care workers found that a mindfulness-based mentoring intervention resulted in better active listening, more patient-focused discussion and collaboration, as well as greater respect among team members. Moreover, the newly learned mindful communication habits seemed to stick; one year later the team members still demonstrated the same skills.
Leadership
Mindfulness has become particularly popular in the business world as a component of leadership training. CEOs and senior executives have revealed that practicing mindfulness helps build leadership skills, connect to employees and achieve business goals.
One study showed that leaders’ mindfulness was associated with employees’ work-life balance, job satisfaction, and job performance. In that same study, employees of mindful leaders also experienced less exhaustion and burnout. The researchers attributed these findings to leaders being more attentive to and aware of employees’ needs, while self-regulating their own impulses and personal agendas.
Studies confirm the idea that mindful leaders are more attuned to their employees’ nonverbal communication, body language and emotions. In one study, more mindful individuals were better able to recognize the emotions displayed on others’ faces. In fact, it is not uncommon for leaders who complete mindfulness training to say communication feels somehow different, like they are truly listening to their employees for the first time.
Communication, conflict management
Much of the improvement in teamwork likely stems from improvement in communication skills and conflict management. Research suggests mindfulness is associated with better conflict management, with less aggressive communication, and better perspective-taking. During conflicts, people who rate higher in mindfulness have been shown to exhibit more positivity in interpersonal interactions, fewer inappropriate reactions, and less hostility. Mindfulness leads people to process events and feedback in a less self-referential or personal way, which fosters greater attention to group outcomes over self-concerns.
In a study of groups without leaders, teams that were randomized to a short mindfulness exercise had better scores on measurements of team bonding, and they performed better as well. These mindfulness-enhanced skills are helpful not only in better teamwork, but also in enhancing negotiation. One study showed that negotiators randomized to a short mindfulness intervention were more successful in distributive bargaining.
Mindfulness may improve negotiations and team functioning by affecting the emotional tone (positivity vs. negativity) of the team. Since mindful individuals tend to be less reactive to negative events, and recover from negative emotions more quickly, they can influence the collective mood and reduce emotional contagion – the tendency for “negative people” to “bring down” the mood of the group. By practicing focused, kind attention and skillful self-management, mindful people tend to influence through example, engaging and inspiring others.
In summary, practicing mindfulness yields personal benefits, and it can benefit everyone around you. Leaders who practice mindfulness listen differently and communicate more carefully. One result is that they have employees who are more productive and report better job satisfaction. Since mindfulness leads to less reactivity, greater focus on others’ needs, and overall positivity, practicing mindfulness also enhances teamwork through better perspective-taking and more skillful self-management. In my personal experience as a coach, clinician and academic researcher, mindfulness makes working relationships more enjoyable and productive. I’m delighted that research is beginning to confirm how the impact of mindfulness on relationships contributes to better business outcomes.