Using Mindfulness to Stay Safe
Over 30 years ago, W. Edwards Deming called for a new approach in the workplace to reduce mistakes and defective workmanship. Sadly that call is yet to be effectively heeded as the impact of poor workplace practices such as multitasking, working excessive hours without taking a proper break or getting enough sleep continues to contribute to mistakes and errors that carry an enormous burden of cost. Mindfulness could help.
In Australia, the cost of mistakes and errors at work currently sits at around $2 billion a year. That’s insane!
The reasons given are many. Stress is frequently cited as the major contributor and there’s certainly a lot of it about with 83% of the Americans reporting this to be their biggest workplace challenge. This is partly because of the increase in the complexity of the work we do that adds to our cognitive load, along with feeling we haven’t got enough time or self-direction in what we do.
The brain deals with stress in the same way as when faced with a physical threat. At least the threat of being potentially someone’s lunch is short-lived. Eat or be eaten has long been the law of the jungle, but in our concrete man-made jungles our stressors are longer lived and multiple, leading to a toxic build-up of stress hormones and a reduction in our ability to access our conscious thought to think through what might be the best solution.
Being human not machine, we are vulnerable to the impact excess negative stress has on mood, memory and cognition. And because we all have a unique perspective of our world, what causes us stress is as diverse as the people we work with.
Whether it’s the work, current events, difficult people or an unrealistic deadline, too much stress is accompanied by a rising intensity of negative emotion such as fear, anxiety or uncertainty making your risk of making a mistake higher because it gets harder to see the obvious.
There are many instances where human error has contributed to significant disasters; Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the Columbia and Challenger Shuttle disasters amongst others.
Stress can do weird things to people’s thinking and behaviour — denial of being wrong being perhaps the most dangerous. Being afraid to break the rules even when they are inappropriate to a given situation can lead to a poor decision being taken. Blaming others for our folly is a favourite past time, especially within a blame culture, as is failing to think and acting on impulse.
All this to conspires to more mindless behaviour.
How many times have any of us been just a moment away from catastrophe because of our failure to think about what we are doing?
This is where mindfulness can help. When you are practising mindfulness, you are in the present, alert, orientated to the task at hand and aware of what needs to be done next. You notice what is going on around you and can take in the bigger picture of what’s happening.
Whether you find practising a form of meditation such as mindfulness or transcendental meditation helpful, it is your conscious choice of focus that counts.
What if every workplace, large and small, were to put in place a mindfulness program to enhance cognitive capability and reduce stress? It doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Implementing a daily routine where the expectation is to take time out (just 10 to 15 minutes) to prepare to think clearly and focus in the right way especially when the stakes are high, contributes to the creation of a brain safe working environment and an effective first step to reduce mindless behaviour and stress at work.
It could lead to a happier, healthier and safer workforce.
