A Holistic Approach to Employee Functioning: Assessing the Impact of a Virtual-Reality Mindfulness Intervention at Work

The purpose of the collected papers was to advance the field of Industrial/ Organizational Psychology by examining the impact of a workplace virtual reality (VR) mindfulness intervention on holistic employee functioning.

The workplace VR mindfulness intervention conducted in this dissertation integrated the components of: a.) being attractive to employees, b.) short in duration, and c.) likely to effectively improve all three dimensions of holistic employee functioning (employee wellbeing, employee performance, and employee attitudes). Thus, this collection of papers aimed to shed light on how employee functioning may be effectively improved through mindfulness VR. The three collected papers detail the results of three organizations that implemented a VR mindfulness program in their respective workplaces for the purpose of employee stress reduction. Manuscript 1 provides data to suggest that VR mindfulness at work is significantly related to decreased employee stress. Manuscript 2 failed to detect significant relationships between VR mindfulness and employee performance and attitudes. Lastly, Manuscript 3 is a Practitioners Report. This paper examines the barriers to stress management in an organizational setting and provides recommendations for overcoming these obstacles.

Together, this collection of papers contributes to occupational health psychology literature and depicts how employee functioning may be effectively improved through modern stress management strategies (i.e., VR mindfulness), which are short and attractive to employees. Unfortunately, the objective of increasing all three dimensions of holistic employee functioning, through an innovative stress management program, was only partially successful. This indicates that, although short and attractive stress management interventions increase employee wellbeing, there is room to examine past stress management program implementation strategies. Practitioners are provided with methods of overcoming organizational barriers to enhance job performance outcomes and job attitudes and to reduce program attrition.