Prominent Value of Mindfulness for Coping Up with Job Related Stress of Employees who Work in The Finance Sector During the Covid-19

Abstract

COVID-19 virus has totally crushed and changed the lives of billions of people in the world. It has arisen as a major epidemiological, economic, and global health crisis (Roychowdhury, 2020). Moreover, the pandemic has infected 232,075,351 individuals and claimed the lives of 4,752,988 people (World Health Organization, 2020). So far, the economic burden of COVID-19 has been estimated to cost between $5.8 and $8.8 trillion (Dennis, 2020), which is expected to plunge most countries into recession (World Bank, 2020). This global pandemic changed the way people live and work before and it triggered one of the worst jobs crises since the great depression (https://www.oecd.org/employment/covid-19.htm) and this crisis was an upsurge of stress in different ways to people who work in various occupations around the world. There has been a significant spike in demand for mindfulness programming since the start of the pandemic (Harrison, P.J., 8 January, 2021). Number of researchers have indicated that introducing mindfulness meditation practice during this pandemic has the potential to complement treatment and is a low-cost beneficial method of providing support with anxiety for all. (Behan, C., 14 May 2020). Mindfulness is the psychological process of purposely bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training. (Kabat-Zinn, J., 2013). Many scholarly articles for mindfulness research in the finance sector in covid-19 have highlighted the benefits of meditation and mindfulness practices (‎Behan, C., 2020 May 14). COVID-19 was changed the way people work in Sri Lanka. With lockdown travel restrictions, minimum staff, distant work, and social distance becoming the new rules. In many organizations, these new ways of working were raising challenges and distresses. But In Sri Lankan context, there is yet less research on mindfulness based intervention for addressing the job related stress during the COVID-19 epidemic. Hence, this paper focuses on mindfulness practice as a potential strategy to reduce the stress experienced by the employees who worked in the finance sector during the pandemic.