The spiritual and coaching genres have grown tremendously in the last few years. Many people practice meditation, yoga, or stress reduction practices today.

There is also more awareness of stress and mental health and openness to talk about it today than only a few years ago.

The collective follows the individual awakening (even though collective changes take longer), and today, more companies also see the value of meditation and stress reduction practices.

Some companies bring in stress coaches who talk about stress reduction, balance, and mindset to help their employees. Or experts who teach people how to prioritize or work more effectively to reduce stress (and produce better results).

Many coaches and experts are valuable and good at what they do. They can fill a function helping people decrease their stress levels, think clearer, balance their work and personal life, and maybe even get in touch with their deeper needs through meditation.

However, in addition to working with the symptoms (the more acute stress), we also need to look at and remove the cause of them. Otherwise, the practices become tools that help us reduce stress temporarily without solving the reason behind it.

We can all benefit from learning how to handle stress and stressful situations. But if one person does three people’s jobs, their problem will not be solved only by learning stress reduction techniques, meditation, or working on their mindset. Unless those practices help them realize they need to quit that job, of course.

Establishing and having clear boundaries at work and in all areas of our lives is crucial. That is something we all need to learn individually.

But again, if you have to set several boundaries daily to keep your workload acceptable, you are not the problem. It also takes a lot of energy to say no and constantly state your boundaries or priorities. That also causes stress.

So, coaching, meditation, and health practices can be significant steps toward healthier workplaces. But the employees can only make some of the changes. If the companies want to take full responsibility, they also need to look at themselves to see if anything within the company is causing the stress and then take action to change it.