Effectiveness of Group Counseling Based On Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy on Job Involvement of Employees of Islamic Azad University of Gorgan Branch

Job involvement is an essential factor and an attitude contributing to the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. Job involvement is based on how employees perceive their work environment, job, and its combination with personal life; its low level among the employees would reduce performance at different levels of the organization. The present study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of group counseling based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on the job involvement of employees in Islamic Azad University of Gorgan, Gorgan City, Iran. The present study was quasi-experimental and used a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The population of this research consisted of all administrative employees (other than faculty members) of the Islamic Azad University of Gorgan, Iran, in the 2017-2018 academic year. Among them, 24 individuals were randomly selected and assigned to the experimental and control groups (12 participants in each group). The Job Involvement Questionnaire (1979) was used for assessing participants’ job involvement in pre-test and post-test. For the experimental group, group counseling sessions of MBCT were held in 16 sessions (each session took one hour and a half) with two sessions per week, while the control group received no intervention. The data were analyzed in SPSS V. 20, using One-Way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The results of ANCOVA showed that group counseling based on MBCT significantly increased the job involvement of the participants in the experimental group compared to the control group in their post-test (F=24.43, P<0.01). The results of this study confirmed the effectiveness of group counseling based on MBCT in increasing the employee’s job involvement. It is recommended that this therapeutic approach be used in organizational and work environments for enhancing job involvement among employees and increasing organizational effectiveness.