Are state mindfulness and state work engagement related during the workday?

ABSTRACT

Given the growing interest in mindfulness in the workplace and the established importance of work engagement for work-related health and well-being, we explore the relationships between these 2 positive psychological states as they vary naturalistically over the workday. Utilising data from 3 measurement occasions per day (before work, mid-workday, and end-workday), we track natural variations in state mindfulness and state work engagement to create a fine-grained picture about their reciprocal relationships within the workday. A sample of 94 university employees completed multiple diary entries per day, for 10 working days. Data were analysed using multilevel structural equation modelling in MPlus, testing within-person pathways between mindfulness and work engagement across the day. Although state work engagement was a predictor of subsequent state mindfulness, state mindfulness did not predict subsequent state work engagement when controlling for earlier within-day work engagement. Overall, the within-day associations between mindfulness and work engagement were weak. We note the high within-day stabilities of state mindfulness and state work engagement, and discuss whether job and personal resources as well as task features might be moderators in the relationships between these constructs.

KEYWORDS:

• Mindfulness
• work engagement
• daily diary
• employee well-being
• broaden-and-build

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Michelle R. Tuckey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7448-6045

Janet Bryan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1628-1279

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Unilever.