Unlock the Power of Creative Mindfulness in the Workplace: Building Connections and Enhancing Employee Happiness
Creative mindfulness is a vital part of self-care and wellness, and should be effectively integrated into workplaces to help manage stress, anxiety, and burnout, foster intra- and inter- team bonding and connection, inspire creative thinking and better problem-solving, and boost morale and job satisfaction.
In the past few years, the conversation around mental health has boomed – be it the loneliness epidemic, the disconnected nature of remote work, or spotting and preventing the signs when we’re on the brink of burnout.
Alongside this, our understanding of the true cost of poor mental health has increased too. Loneliness has been estimated to cost UK employers £2.5 billion every year [1], and unhappy staff cost the UK economy £11 billion per year in lost productivity.[2]
So what can you do as an employer, to help maximise your workplace mindfulness and minimise the negative impact on your bottom line?
Introducing: creative mindfulness, which transforms workplaces and employee satisfaction by building connection, creating a culture of care, and boosting employee happiness.
What is creative mindfulness?
Creative mindfulness is what we often call “meditation for doers” at Recess Living, and it’s our whole MO: that creativity is the ultimate self-care tool. When your hands are engaged in a creative activity, your mind is free to relax, letting go of stressors, worries and anxieties, and reaching a state of calm. In short, it uses creative activities to also create mindfulness.
Don’t just take our word for it: the research behind the connection between creativity and wellbeing is plentiful.
The reason creative mindfulness works so well is because research has shown that play is a type of rest state for our brain, as it helps regulate and soothe our nervous system [3] (contrary to what we’ve been led to believe). This means it’s a vital and necessary part of our biology, as important as nutrition, sleep and exercise. It’s not a nice-to-have, reserved for when we’re feeling our best; it’s a practice that can help us feel better, and should be in our toolkit all the time. [4]
“ Creative wellness is a vital and necessary part of our biology: as important as nutrition, sleep and exercise.”
Without play, adults have been proven to be less curious, less imaginative, and can lose a sense of joyful engagement in daily life. [5] Research also shows that just two hours of art participation a week improves mental health. [6]
In short, creative mindfulness is so effective it can be seen as almost like a prescription for your mental health – but one that you can dispense in the office.
The science behind creative mindfulness
Why does creative mindfulness have such a profound impact on our mental health?
The key lies in neuroscience and our nervous system. Specifically polyvagal theory, which focuses on The Vagus Nerve that regulates our emotional responses. The Vagus Nerve sends information between our brain and our organs, and influences our heart, lungs and digestive system – which is, not coincidentally, where we feel the most pronounced physical symptoms of anxiety, depression, and burnout.
Polyvagal theory details 3 systems of response to the outside world: the Rest and Digest Ventral Vagal System, the Fight or Flight Sympathetic Nervous System, and the Freeze or Shutdown Dorsal Vagal System. Each system has a slightly different function, but all in service of regulating our stress and relaxation responses.
When each system – in particular the Rest/Digest and Fight/Flight states – are in harmony, we’re in what Dr Dan Siegel coins The Window Of Tolerance: our ideal, optimal state of functioning, where we can sail smoothly through our days, meeting stress and responsibility with resilience and rational thinking.
The great news is we can actually train our nervous system and widen this window, inch by inch, by experiencing connection, safety and mindfulness.
Cool, huh?
The effect of workplace mindfulness
But what are the benefits for workplace mindfulness specifically? We’re so glad you asked.
Creative mindfulness has a multitude of benefits in the workplace, but we’ve gathered them into four areas so you can see just how practically powerful it is:
Creative mindfulness helps manage stress, anxiety and burnout
As we mentioned above, stress, anxiety and burnout cost companies an astronomical amount every year – so not only can creative mindfulness help your employees, it can also help your profit margins.
Creative mindfulness fosters connection and team bonding
Engaging in a creative mindfulness practice also fosters connection within your department, improving channels of communication and helping them feel a sense of belonging.
There’s no ‘I’ in team, but there is in anxiety – and going to work with people you know have your back makes the world of difference (one that Harvard Business Review estimated could be worth over £38M annually, based on an organisation with 10,000 employees.[7])
Creative mindfulness leads to better problem-solving and innovation
Creative mindfulness helps people see the bigger picture, and allows them to ‘notice more possibilities without being clouded by mental blinders’.[8] Combine this with a sense of belonging, which will allow them to feel less fear and judgement and more support when coming up with an out-of-the-box idea, and you’ll be overrun with incredible ideation and solutions.
Creative mindfulness boosts morale and job satisfaction
A positive company culture spreads to every aspect of business, from the C-suite right through to the customers: the ROl on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness programs can be as high as 6 to 1.[9]
We see this day in, day out with the work we do. In post-event surveys we’ve seen:
85% of employees reported feeling less stress after their Recess Living experience;
70% of employees reported feeling more connected to their colleagues after their Recess Living experience (with some citing the workshop opened up new conversations that allowed them to see senior management team from a new positive perspective)
65% of employees reported feeling more valued by their employer after their Recess Living program
Clients saw a 28% increase in the number of employees who answered either Likely or Very Likely in response to ‘How likely are you to recommend our company as a great place to work to others”, which positively impacts their Net Promoter score
Ways to incorporate creative mindfulness into the workplace
There are so many ways you can incorporate creative mindfulness into the workplace, so here’s three to get you started:
Open meetings and sessions with a creative task
Set aside a few minutes at the start of a session or a meeting to let everyone relax with a creative task or ice breaker. Note, this isn’t the same as a “blue sky thinking” session – this task should be unrelated to the company and/or agenda of the meeting. Think watercolour, not watercooler!
Set up play corners in breakout spaces
What would be in your ideal play corner? Doodle pads, a whiteboard wall, Lego blocks; all of these can be a welcome wellness tool for employees who need to take a moment.
Book a Recess Living Workshop
Workplace mindfulness is what we do – and we’d love to bring it to your workplace. Get more info on our corporate creative mindfulness workshops here.
Source: Employers and Loneliness, Department of Media, Culture and Sport, Gov UK 2021 | 2. Source: Health, Happiness & Productivity, Unum & WPI Economics, 2023 | 3. -5. Source: Play: how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul Dr Stuart Brown, Christopher Vaughan 2009 | 6. Source: The art of being healthy: a qualitative study to develop a thematic framework for understanding the relationship between health and the arts. C.R. Davies et al | 7. Source: Harvard Business Review, 2019 | 8. Source: Henriksen, D., Richardson, C., & Shack, K. (2020). Mindfulness and creativity: Implications for thinking and learning. Thinking skills and creativity, 37, 100689 | 9. Source: Harvard Business Review What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs? by Leonard L. Berry, Ann M. Mirabito, and William B. Baun