Companies are fighting back by offering their employees stress-relieving programs so they prevent stress before it causes long-term issues, while institutions such as Sage allow you to meditate from the ease and comfort of your own desk.
Stress is a physical response which impacts the body’s hormones. In the short-term, it can cause you to feel uncomfortable, distracted and easily upset. However, if it perseveres over long periods, it can lead to dangerous and sometimes permanent physical and mental disorders. Common symptoms include high-blood pressure, stomach problems, back pain, and depression. This is not only bad for the person feeling the stress, but the business they work for.
One of the best ways to counter those stressful hormones is to fill your body with more positive ones; and there’s no better way to do this than with exercise! Exercise floods the body with adrenaline and pleasure hormones, like dopamine.
Google and Zappos, the online retailer, are just two of the increasing number of companies that understand that a healthy body makes for a healthy mind, and a healthy employee makes for a healthy business. These companies provide their employees with either on-site access to sports facilities, or membership to gyms and wellness programs which ensure their workers stay physically fit and have a way to work off the stress of a hard day in the office.
Some take this even further and use the physical benefits of exercise to also strengthen the relationships of their employees. In high-pressure jobs with tight deadlines, it’s unsurprising that employees sometimes disagree. However, if these disagreements are not addressed quickly, rivalries can quickly unravel timetables and impact business opportunities.
Team-building exercises not only help reduce physical and mental stress levels, but foster communication and partnerships so that your employees feel more comfortable with one another.
Meditation may not seem like exercise – it’s certainly not as physically demanding – but it one of the most effective ways of exercising your mind and your soul. Just taking 15 minutes during the work day to focus on yourself will improve your ability to multi-task, to be more creative and confident, and can even improve your physical immune system.
Combine all the benefits of physical exercise and meditation, and you get yoga, and there is no bigger company out there taking advantage of how much yoga benefits its employees than Apple. While physical exercise floods the body with stress-relieving hormones and meditation allows you to get better perspective and control over your surroundings, yoga allows employees to do both at the same time. Providing access to free yoga classes improves physical fitness, restraint and control, mindfulness, and is even a great way to get colleagues bonding with each other outside of the office.
With stress-related issues resulting in up to $100 billion in lost business revenue each year, now has never been a better time to invest in your employees. Something as simple as providing a quiet space to relax can do wonders for improving productivity and employee happiness, but going one step further and encouraging employees to physically and mentally exercise themselves is the fastest path to improving business performance.
