To teach or not to teach employees to meditate, that is the question

There are hundreds of videos on YouTube with guided meditations to improve your concentration or simply relax. And they begin with something like: “Find a quiet space, make yourself comfortable, and gently close your eyes...” The videos barely last 15 minutes and they have something like 200,000 views. Others have two million. But the success of relaxation does not stop there. Wellness companies and mindfulness gurus offer this type of guided meditation — usually a bit longer, about 40 minutes per session — to large companies and their employees.

This particular industry is worth around $60 billion dollars worldwide. However, more and more studies have cast doubt on the practice, claiming a two-week meditation course does not have long-term effects on the employee, especially when the causes of stress are part of the work itself.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but the results of a study carried out by expert William J. Fleming for the University of Oxford this January are categorical. “Participants appear no better off” after attending the meditation program, the expert says in his report. Meditation apps or attending a crash course on techniques to deal with stress that are not applied later do not work either. Fleming analyzed dozens of tests carried out with different employees in different companies (just over 46,000 employees spread across 233 companies) and concluded that the vast majority of them “are not providing [the employee] the additional or appropriate resources” to deal with work stress.

The researcher gives the following reason: it makes no sense to try to change the individual without changing the work environment in which their activity takes place. “Despite evidence supporting the effectiveness of organizational change and work redesign on improving employee well-being, interventions that target the individual worker are the most common,” says Fleming. Another study, this time by two researchers at universities in the United States, concluded the same thing in 2019 after analyzing 32,974 employees of a large company. One group participated in wellness programs and another did not. At first, the result seemed positive: those who had received the course reported a greater sense of well-being than those who had stayed at home. However, that difference disappeared after a year without taking the course again.

Business on the rise

Even so, these types of programs have been on an upward spiral for years. A study by Exactitude Consultancy estimated the market for wellness solutions for companies at $57 billion in 2020 and predicts annual growth of 9% between now and 2029. These figures coincide with those obtained by the center data analysis company Mordor Intelligence, which valued the market at $60.4 billion in 2021 and forecasts annual growth of 7%.

State employee protection laws and statistics negatively linking mental health and productivity have helped popularize these types of practices. The largest market is the United States, but Europe is slowly catching up on the trend. In Spain, only 23% of companies offer their employees emotional well-being programs, and the courses are still a strange fad, according to the Human Resources Trends 2023 study by the company Pluxee, which specializes in employee benefits services.

The professionals who offer this type of program maintain that consistency is key for learning to have a real effect. Thais Alonso has been working in this field for more than 20 years, she has a CHO (Chief Happiness Officer) certificate from La Salle University and was a pioneer in the development of mindfulness training programs for organizations in Spain. The minimum training she offers is two weeks, although she prefers it to last a month. “I also set homework, which are meditation exercises to do at home. My courses you give you some tools to handle the most stressful times, but what is important is that if you want to see long-term results, you have to train your mind constantly and regularly,” says the professional who has worked for companies such as Toyota and Siemens in the past.

Alonso argues that what is important “is how each person manages stressful situations, whether at work or in life.” These techniques can also help develop other skills, especially when the stress is generated by the company that is paying for the course to reduce it. “It’s another story if that stress is generated by an injustice such as the company’s schedule or productivity goals. Here mindfulness helps us to work on communication and assertiveness, being able to speak without fear about the things that you think need to be adjusted. This practice does not serve to exploit employees so that they do not have stress. If they asked me for that, I wouldn’t do it,” the expert states bluntly. Since she started, Alonso can say truthfully that, although most of the employees do not continue with the practice, others do, and they call her from time to time to thank her.

Make it a habit

Elisa Sánchez is a psychologist and human resources expert who believes that creating the habit is essential for this to work. “For it to have a permanent positive effect on your health, it has to be something that is internalized and that you adopt as a habit in your life,” she says. Sánchez, who also specializes in techniques to help employees with stress, explains that these are different from meditation. There are many types from relaxation techniques (which include muscle and mental relaxation) to mindfulness, which differs from meditation in that its aim is not to get the individual to relax.

The most common criticism that these programs face has to do with the intention of the company that pays for them. André Spicer, who is a professor of organizational behavior at the University of London and wrote the book Business Bullshit, stated in an article in The Guardian that the factors that generate the greatest stress in employees are in the work itself. Insecurity about the future of work, very long working hours, and lack of support from the company have a great impact on employee stress. Spicer points to a study that found the most effective ways to improve employee well-being were reducing wasteful bureaucratic procedures, reducing meeting lengths, improving shifts, and giving employees a sense of psychological security in their team.

Sánchez argues that these types of measures come first, followed by meditation and relaxation techniques. “The Occupational Risk Prevention Law says that a company is responsible for caring for the health of its workforce; risks that cannot be avoided must be measured, and everything possible must be done to minimize them.” That is why the psychosocial problems that employees face are becoming more and more important. “The company has an obligation to improve working conditions to prevent them from being stressful, and that is a priority. Companies have to minimize the workload, the pace, the difficulty, make sure the space is ergonomic, all of that,” she adds.

Then there is the second level: “Provide people with tools to minimize those risks that cannot be avoided, such as the stress that is inevitable in some jobs, and this is where this type of relaxation and meditation techniques would come in,” Sánchez admits. “Enjoy this moment, your moment.” So ends the 15-minute guided meditation that began at the beginning of this article. “Smile and be deeply grateful with all your being. Thank you,” it says before the screen goes black.

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