Dr. Rich Fernandez on Bringing Mindfulness Into the Workplace
When we build out our work on mindfulness, resilience, and well-being at a company like Starbucks, we always tie it back to the organization's own core values. It isn't pitched as a standalone perk that happens to make people feel a little better. The point is to activate the work values the company already cares about, which pays off for the employees and for the business at the same time.
Erik asked me to walk through what one of these programs actually looks like for a group of employees, from the first contact with a new client like Starbucks all the way through.
The first question organizations raise is almost always the same: why would mindfulness be useful at work? So we point them to the research. By the time we're actually sitting across from them in a real conversation, though, their curiosity is usually already running high.
For anyone thinking about doing this kind of work with companies, my advice is to go where the energy is. I don't mean that as a throwaway line. I mean you look for organizations that show genuine interest, ideally with someone in a decision-making role who's prepared to champion the effort and carry it forward. What doesn't work is pushing mindfulness into a place that isn't ready. We've tried it. People say, 'Tell us about mindfulness, we keep hearing about it,' we show up, and we discover the organization was only mildly curious, chasing a trend more than anything.
Contrast that with a Starbucks, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, all clients of ours, who come in saying, 'How do we bring this in? We already believe it's good for us, we think it'll help on several fronts, whether that's our corporate values or how we develop our people. This matters to us, so come figure out with us what it could look like here.' A conversation like that moves the whole initiative forward.
As for what we actually offer, we like to open with the science and the data. There's a specific set of mental training methods that have been shown to help people sharpen how they focus, stay calm, stay clear, and arrive at better insights about their work, right through to being more creative. The same practices help with managing stress and leave people more connected to themselves and to others, which tends to make them stronger teammates and, over time, better leaders.