Examining the effect of different facets of mindfulness on work engagement
| Pages | 193-208 |
| Published date | 07 January 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-09-2017-0220 |
| Date | 07 January 2019 |
| Author | Asanka Gunasekara,Connie Shao-mei Zheng |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Examining the effect of different
facets of mindfulness on
work engagement
Asanka Gunasekara
Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia, and
Connie Shao-mei Zheng
Deakin Graduate School of Business, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between mindfulness and work
engagement, with a particular focus on exploring the extent to which four facets of mindfulness,
i.e. “attention”,“awareness”,“present focus”and “acceptance”impact on work engagement.
Design/methodology/approach –Exploratory factor and multiple regression analyses were used to test
the hypothesised relationships among a sample of 130 employees.
Findings –The findings show that mindfulness as a single construct is positively related to work
engagement. The analysis from the facet level of mindfulness illustrates that each of four facets is also
significantly related to work engagement. In particular, employees with refined attentional skills and
accepting the present moment reality were found to contribute more to work engagement.
Practical implications –Organisational programs that focus on building personal resources could use the
meditation-based mindfulness programs to help individuals widen attention span as well as to develop
non-judgemental attitude.
Originality/value –Focussing on developing mindful employees and promoting mindfulness
practices at workpla ce, especially, by wor king on specific stra tegies, to expand “att entional skills”and
the “attitude of accepting t he present moment rea lity”may be another promis ing strategy to enhance
work engagement.
Keywords Work engagement, Acceptance, Attitudes, Mindfulness, Attention, Present focus
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
For the last two decades, there has been accumulative evidence to suggest that mindfulness
contributes to the optimal functioning of individuals, groups, and organisations (Akin and
Akin, 2015; Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008; Brown and Ryan, 2003; Dane and Brummel, 2013;
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Despite limited research devoted to examining
mindfulness at work, there have been some emerging studies to identify how mindfulness
could be used as an individual stress reduction strategy in order to enhance personal
well-being (Brown and Ryan, 2003; Coffey and Hartman, 2008). At the group level, a few
recent empirical research has focussed on testing the effect of mindfulness on emotion
regulation and interpersonal relations (Akin and Akin, 2015; Geiger et al., 2015). At the
organisational level, mindfulness has been studied as a factor related to several important
workplace outcomes such as employee turnover and task performance (Kroon et al., 2015;
Dane, 2011, Dane and Brummel, 2013); job satisfaction (Hülsheger et al., 2012); organisational
learning (Kind and Haar, 2017); and ethical decision making (Ruedy and Schweitzer, 2010).
Work engagement has received a considerable attention within the domain of
organisation and management literature (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008; Roof, 2015; Schaufeli
et al., 2006). Work engagement is also considered to be an important construct that promotes
organisational success (Ghadi et al., 2013; Kahn, 1990; Malinowski and Lim, 2015; Rich et al.,
2010), enhances organisational commitment (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008; Ibrahim and
Al Falasi, 2014), increases employee wellbeing (Malinowski and Lim., 2015) and job
satisfaction (Rayton and Yalabik, 2014). However, the Gallup 2013 report revealed that only
Employee Relations
Vol. 41 No. 1, 2019
pp. 193-208
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-09-2017-0220
Received 18 September 2017
Revised 18 April 2018
Accepted 26 April 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
193
The effect of
different facets
13 per cent of employees surveyed worldwide were engaged at work, the rest were
dis-engaged (Crabtree, 2013). As such, searching for new ways of enhancing work
engagement would be vital for organisations to sustain competitive advantages.
Despite a growing literature both on mindfulness and work engagement, the relationship
between mindfulness and engagement is less examined. Furthermore, the scanty research
(e.g. Leroy et al., 2013; Malinowski, 2008) that did examine such relationship tends to treat
mindfulness as a single construct to influence workplace engagement. Our current study
takes a different path to search for new ways to enhance work engagement via examining
the effect of different facets of mindfulness on work engagement. It is believed that
workplace engagement is essentially driven by individual employees, especially by their
awareness of work environment, attention to their tasks, present focus on engaging in what
they do on their tasks, and non-judgemental attitude of accepting challenging work with
effective emotion regulation strategy. Awareness, attention, presence focus and attitude are
four fundamental facets of mindfulness (Bishop et al., 2004; Feldman et al., 2007).
Even though there were some research effort of linking mindfulness to work engagement
(Leroy et al., 2013; Malinowski, 2008), how and what facet of mindfulness impacts more or
less on work engagement remains as unanswered research questions. The current study
intends to fill up the gap.
Three theoretical and practical contributions could be drawn from the current study
outcomes. First, based on the conservation of resource theory (COR), the current study
extends the prior research and applies mindfulness as one of personal resources defined as
individuals sense of ability to control and to conserve personal resilience to handle the
dynamic work environment (Kroon et al., 2015; Hyland et al., 2015). We argue that
mindfulness goes beyond self-efficacy, self-confidence and optimism and can impact on the
work environment by effectively dealing with demanding conditions with personal
resilience (Hobfoll, 2002; Zivnuska et al., 2016). The findings from the current study
contribute this new knowledge to the existing literature on examining the relationship
between mindfulness and work engagement. Second, particularly our study outcomes help
increase the knowledge about the facet level of mindfulness and its effect on work
engagement, which was not examined in the prior research. Third, identifying how and
what aspect of mindful impacts most on work engagement in the current study has
significant practical implications. On one hand, organisational managers would have a
better understanding of how important it is to develop mindful employees who likely
contribute more to improve the quality of workplace relations and to enhance the level of
engagement, which could subsequently lead to positive organisational performance.
On the other hand, mindfulness practitioners could focus on training employees to
develop more skills on the facets (e.g. attention and acceptance) that were identified to be
more significantly associated with work engagement. Both organisational engagement
strategy and mindfulness training programs can be streamlined and targeted on
developing employees’attention and acceptance skills which are more effective to enhance
work engagement.
The remaining paper is thus structured to provide a brief literature review on the
definitions of each facet of mindfulness and how they are related to work engagement.
Research hypotheses are subsequently developed. This is followed by an outline of research
method, and analysis of data collected. We then discuss the findings and conclude the paper
with further explanation of key research contributions, limitations and future implications.
Literature review and hypotheses development
John Kabat-Zinn, a leading mindfulness scholar, defined mindfulness as “paying attention in
a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment non-judgmentally”(Kabat-Zinn, 1994,
p. 4). Brown and Ryan (2003) extended this definition by signifying the importance of
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