Financial Analysts, Auditors, Senior Accountants, Controllers, and Tax professionals often work in stressful conditions. It is important for the mental and physical health of your team that they have coping mechanisms to mitigate their stress. Mindfulness and meditation are techniques that not only reduce stress, but also increase focus and productivity.
Stress
Stress can affect every level of your employees’ health, from their emotional well-being to their physical vitality. Too much stress can cause headaches, low energy, stomachaches, insomnia, moodiness, and low self-esteem. Stress also affects cognitive ability. It can make employees forgetful and disorganized. These short-term effects decrease the productivity of your team. If you endure chronic stress, they can also have long-term side effects, such as depression and cardiovascular disease.
Focus
Many jobs in the accounting and financial services field require multitasking. Multitasking and stress both negatively affect a person’s ability to concentrate. The problem with multitasking is that every time someone tries to return to a task, their concentration level drops. This increases distraction and the ability to focus.
Workplace Wellness
A regular meditation practice can help you maintain focus, improve productivity, and increase retention. Meditation can be an easy, integral part of an overall workplace wellness program. According to psychologist and science journalist, Daniel Goleman, “bringing attention back to the breath each time you feel your mind wandering during meditation helps strengthen the brain’s neural circuitry for focus.” Meditation, thus, trains the brain to react better to distractions. If you and your team are calmer and more focused, you will accomplish more.
Meditation Programs
One way to help your team manage stress is to set aside ten minutes during the work day for everyone who is interested to meditate. Even ten minutes of mediation a day can help lower stress levels for hours. Moreover, it encourages employees to get into the habit of meditating regularly. Mornings are often the best time of the day to perform meditation. It also helps if you have water readily available for your team. Drinking sufficient water is also essential for maintaining physical health.
There are several smartphone apps you can use as a structure for your team’s meditation time. Insight Timer offers guided meditation, calming audio tracks, and mediation instruction in their free version. You can bookmark the ones your team enjoys and rotate through them. With the app, employees will have access to over 2,000 mediation teachers who can give them lessons on how to improve their meditation techniques. Simple Habit is another meditation app that is intended specifically for people who live busy lifestyles. The app has a ton of guided meditations from mindfulness experts designed to improve sleep, focus, and stress levels.
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