Workplace spirituality, self-compassion and mindfulness as antecedents of employee mental wellbeing

Abstract

PurposeMental wellbeing brings in multiple benefits to employees and their organizations like better decision-making capacity, greater productivity, resilience and so on. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of a few antecedents of mental wellbeing like workplace spirituality, mindfulness and self-compassion, using structural equation modeling (SEM).Design/methodology/approachUsing the convenience sampling method, data were collected from 333 employees of various organizations in India and SEM was performed using the R Program to test the hypotheses.FindingsResults suggest that mindfulness and self-compassion influenced the mental wellbeing of employees. It was also observed that workplace spirituality has a significant influence on both mindfulness and self-compassion.Originality/valueAn in-depth review of the literature revealed that no previous studies had examined the complex relationship between workplace spirituality, mindfulness, self-compassion and the mental wellbeing of employees. This research suggests that workplace spirituality, mindfulness and self-compassion are important factors that influence employees' mental wellbeing, and it empirically tests this in a developing country context. The present study enriches the literature studies on mental wellbeing, mindfulness, self-compassion and workplace spirituality by integrating “mindfulness to meaning theory”, “socio-emotional selectivity theory”, and “broaden and build theory”.