Keeping my mind on the job: Mindfulness and workplace safety

Introduction: The link between Mindfulness and workplace safety was established some time ago within high reliability organisations. These organisations have long recognised that safety enhancement will come from understanding the person within their work environment. To date however the level of one's individual mindfulness and its relationship with safe work behaviours does not appear to have been widely researched. This research therefore continued the examination of the relationship between an individual’s safety related behaviours, mindfulness, the physical work environment and an individual’s cognitive failures. Method: Various industry workers (N = 92) were recruited and completed a package of self report measures including The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ), The Physical Work Environment Satisfaction Questionnaire (PWESQ) and a measurement of Safe Work Behaviour which followed on from earlier research on safe work behaviours and the link to workplace accidents. Results: Results indicated that mindfulness is positively related to an individual's propensity for safe work behaviour. Mindfulness was negatively related to cognitive failures and to satisfaction with the work environment indicating that the more mindfully orientated a person is the lower an individual’s cognitive failure level is inclined to be, as is their dissatisfaction with the physical work environment. Discussion: Organisations that recognise that they have a direct influence over the mindfulness levels of their workers and who therefore endeavour to enhance the mindfulness of their workers will benefit from having workers who are more in tune with not just their own safety behaviour but the safety work behaviours of those around them.