If your organization doesn’t yet have mindfulness practices in place, don’t fret, because it doesn’t have to cost much or take many resources. To simplify the discussion, here are a three popular ways to bring mindfulness into your workplace, from biggest to smallest:

Big Budget: Strategic Mindfulness Training
The biggest and boldest way is to obtain a sizeable budget and hire a mindfulness training company. This likely would involve planning a long-term strategy of training management in mindful leadership, then possibly training staff thereafter.

This is the Cadillac approach, requiring a business case, HR resources to partner with an external training vendor, integrating mindfulness with organizational development plans and rolled out over a several years. A small percentage of organizations do it this way.

Small Budget: Train Employees to Become In-house Facilitators
Many companies are now seeing a demand from employees to do something with mindfulness. It doesn’t take much to find employees who have their own personal mindfulness and/or meditation practice and jump at the chance to help create a group practice at work.

To create a respected, well-run ongoing practice requires these employees to be trained as skilled facilitators. Most companies pay for this facilitator training and allow meeting rooms to be used for group mindfulness sessions on a regular basis.

Typically, you might invite an outside speaker to kick-off a new program and speak a few times per year. The ongoing practice lead by employees-trained-as-mindfulness-facilitators is generally a weekly group gathering where the facilitator leads them through a live, guided meditation and discussion.

No Budget: Taking Tips, Tapping Talent and Tech
Many people know a little bit about mindfulness, but don’t know how to start. It’s easy to pull content from many online sources to share out with your employees. Most companies have some kind of wellness communication channel such as emails, lunch and learns, team meetings, website and posters that can be used to help employees get introduced to the concept. Sometimes a knowledgeable employee might even volunteer to give a talk to their co-workers.

If you don’t know what the appetite is for mindfulness, don’t be afraid to ask your employees. If you are timid about this subject, think about starting by sharing out tips and resources and then seek reactions.

Workplace mindfulness brings much benefit to employees. Research in this area is growing quickly, and many companies have adopted it. If you missed our June webinar “How HR Can Start a Great Workplace Mindfulness Practice,” it covers the why and how of starting workplace mindfulness.

So whether you have a lot of interest within your organization, a big or a small budget, there are ways to jump in and start realizing the benefits.

Wendy Quan provides mindfulness meditation facilitator training and certification online courses which are available to CPHR BC & Yukon members at a preferred rate. Find out more.  Also, CPHR BC & Yukon member can access her on-demand sessions  Mindfulness for Busy HR Professionals and How to Bring Mindfulness into Your Workplace with No Ongoing Operating Costs free!

Wendy Quan, founder of The Calm Monkey, is an industry leader, helping organizations implement mindfulness meditation programs and combining change management techniques to create personal and organizational change resiliency. She trains meditators to become workplace facilitators.