Mindfulness and high performance in the workplace

There are many benefits to implementing Mindfulness in the workplace, such as improved focus, creativity, patience, lower stress levels and higher satisfaction. With over 30 years of experience in this space, our CEO Frank Cuiuli has implemented various practices across 8Squad to benefit our teams and individuals. In this article, Frank explains how you and your organisation can get started with the mindfulness journey.

The act of living in the present moment

Mindfulness in the workplace is becoming more prevalent every year, but why? In today’s society, stress takes a toll on our quality of life. At 8Squad, we take this problem seriously and offer a wide range of practices and techniques to help individuals and teams improve their wellbeing in and outside the workplace.

Mindfulness is the act of living in the present moment and is defined as “a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.” Implementing mindfulness can be done through meditation, yoga, or exercises that last only a few minutes each day. This practice is more than a fashionable thing for our team – it is an essential element to our high-performance program.

The importance of Mindfulness in the workplace

Being passionate about your job is great, but we are all familiar with experiencing fatigue when we are working too long without taking a break. However, other less obvious but just as damaging effects can occur when we are not mindful. These can include a decline in creativity, a lack of problem-solving ability, and decreased mental agility.

When people become more aware of their own emotions, they can better understand how to recognise the needs and feelings of others. This, in turn, reduces workplace tensions. And in a fast-paced and high growth business such as ours, tensions are guaranteed.

Additionally, suppose you are not focusing on what is happening right now. In that case, it is very easy to miss valuable information from the people around you or critical changes taking place within your own business.

There are many benefits to implementing mindfulness in your workplace, such as improved focus, creativity, patience, lower stress levels and higher satisfaction.

When 8Squad introduced mindfulness into the workplace, our goal was to put our people’s health first and help employees pay attention to the task at hand. Our secondary objectives were to increase productivity and reduce stress levels. Mindfulness is our pathway to help individuals become more aware of their own emotions and reactions, leading to more constructive interactions with their peers.

Can mindfulness make a difference in the workplace? The answer is yes! Mindfulness can be especially beneficial for business. Here are just a few reasons why:

1. Mindfulness can help individuals to be more productive and efficient. In many studies, researchers have found that employees who participated in just a three-week intensive course on mindfulness observed increases in productivity and wellbeing after taking the course. We also noticed these benefits reported by our teams. 
2. There is much pressure on everyone to perform their best in rapidly changing environments where time is always scarce. In such environments, people can be prone to overthinking and overreacting to the high pressures at work. Mindfulness can help decrease individuals’ feelings of anxiety and depression, affecting how they interact with others in the workplace. When people feel less stressed and more emotionally balanced, they are less likely to react negatively to unexpected situations or tensions in the workplace. Mindfulness offers an opportunity to take time out to relax, breathe, and plan how to tackle the workload. 

Worth noting, we wrap an additional layer around our staff that includes external coaches who help them deal with the more severe issues. These coaches are also proficient in all the methods we teach to ensure consistency in communication and employee experience.

There are many more benefits that can be seen both inside and outside the work environment. Over time, mindfulness has the potential to create a better culture in any organisation – one where people feel supported, engaged, and happy.

Implementing Mindfulness in the workplace

The first step of implementing mindfulness was getting my teams interested in mindfulness practices to see the benefits. We did this in a very experiential manner rather than simply relying on educating. 

While we introduced high-quality content through our 8Squad Academy, I run regular weekly sessions for our teams to get an authentic experience of these practices. I have 30 years of experience in training and teaching, allowing me to run mindfulness practices, but it is not hard to find top-level practitioners who can facilitate sessions for your teams. I highly recommend that you do your research as there are too many self-rated professionals as this space has become overly populated. 

It is also worthwhile looking into a range of practices. At 8Squad, we offer our teams ChiKung, Meditation, Mindful Movement, and general movement awareness classes. This diversity of practices ensures maximum participation because everyone has their preferences. There is no one size fits all.

Implementing Mindfulness requires a shift of mind, commitment and time, but once you start seeing short and long-lasting benefits for you, your teams and your organisation, you will not want to look back.

On a final note, Mindfulness is not something you do when the important stuff is complete. It IS the critical ongoing work that leads to doing the important stuff better. High-performance is a mindset that requires balance across all key activities, including recovery.

About Frank Cuiuli

Frank has over 20 years of enterprise leadership experience and founded his first Salesforce Consultancy in 2009. He also studied NeuroPhysics and practised as a rehabilitation therapist dealing with conditions ranging from PTSD to brain injury. With this hybrid experience, Frank knows first-hand how digital transformation and change can cause disruption and even anxiety within any organisation. That’s why 8Squad highly values personal accountability, accountability to each other and most importantly, to our clients.

About 8Squad

At 8Squad, we specialise in delivering complex technology projects that put humans first. With over 1000 Salesforce projects delivered, we’re recognised for our unique ways of working and dynamic approach to digital challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow. Whether you’re scaling up, staying up or surging ahead, we can help you achieve your business goals with Salesforce faster.