Koru mindfulness and its association to perceived stress and employee well-being in the property management industry: a non-controlled exploratory study

Purpose Onsite property management professionals face a demanding occupation as they handle the day-to-day operations of a property. This results in interfacing with diverse people and tasks which can cause stress and negatively affect employee well-being. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a mindfulness intervention on perceived stress and employee well-being of property management professionals. Design/methodology/approach In this uncontrolled pilot study, a convenience sample of 23 property management professionals participated in the four-week Koru Basic Mindfulness curriculum. A quasi-experimental pretest-intervention–posttest design was used with participants answering questions from the Perceived Stress Scale and Employee Well-Being scale. In all, 13 participants completed both the pretest and posttest (n = 13). Changes in mean scores were estimated with two-tailed paired t-tests, and when data were not normally distributed, the Wilcoxon signed rank test was performed to assess changes. Findings The results of this study indicate that participation in the Koru Basic mindfulness curriculum was associated with statistically significant reductions in perceived stress, but surprisingly not associated with any statistically significant changes across the three domains within the Employee Well-Being scale. Originality/value This study contributes to the ongoing discussions of mindfulness and well-being in the workplace by implementing a novel mindfulness-based intervention, specifically the Koru Basic Mindfulness curriculum, to measure perceived stress and employee well-being within the property management industry. Based on these findings, mindfulness interventions may have a beneficial impact on perceived stress and decision-makers in the property management industry are recommended to explore mindfulness interventions as part of their human resources strategy.