More than 1,100 companies — including Starbucks, Adobe, and GE — are now enrolled in the Headspace for Work program. But as Covid-19 catapults Headspace into a new stratosphere of popularity, experts say its scientific grounding is shakier than its subscription numbers might suggest.
Corporate Mental Healthcare of employees has evolved from early “alcoholism treatment plans” in 1960s, to overall “mindfulness” in 2020. Just the use of the term “mindfulness” in a corporate setting would have formerly been a “fish out of water” scenario, but as with many changes today, it’s just one more thing.
Over the decades, various makeovers and company-wide programs have danced in and out of the psychological components of worker health and happiness. Which were mostly fads that came and went, because it’s extremely hard to measure intangibles, such as holistic betterment or improvement.
Mindfulness seems destined to run up against “hard to measure” objectives and achievements in a corporate bean counting environment, as in the past. Maybe something is different today? Clearly the need is obvious, as social creatures we are definitely missing something during the pandemic, and background anxiety about the future is ubiquitous.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/As-Headspace-booms-the-apps-popularity-outpaces-its-evidence-1.pdf”]