In the last 20 years, financial crisis, growing unemployment, environmental issues, have considerably increased stress at work. As a result, nowadays, wellness at work has become a corporate strategy in itself: as an example, the French Company Lea Nature offers free nursery services for employees, organic fruits daily distribution, and 50% rebate on access during lunch break to a biopolis built on Company premises with yoga and meditation services. Observed results include reduction of employee conflicts, development of kindness and cooperation, lowering of absenteeism, and drastic reduction of trade union claims.

Obviously, corporates haven’t become philanthropic…The analysis done by corporations boils down to “how to improve performance by managing wellness at work”.This new analysis clashes with traditional methods consisting of increasing pressure on employees to stimulate added results: multi-city of resulting burn-out syndrome in the last decade led to rethinking the method and focussing on medium-term rather than short term results. This was driven by the Positive Psychology movement designed to study what makes people happy at work, which led to 2 major proven conclusions :

1. happiness at work can improve efficiency by 30%

2. happiness at work can be developed by using proper tools

It is interesting to understand how do corporates go about developing that strategy and the analysis they make. Surprising enough, this drives corporations on the previously unknown and neglected ground, the world of emotions…

As a start, idea is to minimize negative emotions at work ( anger, frustration,…) and stimulate positive emotions as it has been evidenced that they develop creativity, quickness of mind, self-confidence, cooperation between services,…and overall limit personnel turnover. If the objective is to obtain wellness at work, one needs to understand that this entails a good balance between work demands and available resources, as excessive stress is the direct consequence of a misbalance between both items.

So, the key point to develop wellness is to manage the excessive level of stress defined as the individual perception of a misbalance between constraints and available resources, threatening one’s health. This differs from normal stress which is an ordinary reaction of adaptation to the environment. It happens that corporations have analyzed the over-stress indicators (insomnia, lack of concentration ability, emotional outbursts, behavioral disorganization) and looked for solutions.

Corporations, hence, elaborate on what managers should do to develop wellness at work within one’s team :

  • Manage own self,  as one’s wellness spreads around
  • Balance constraints and given resources 
  • Bring support: active listening, bring meaning, direct help, positive reinforcement, and celebration
  • Favor self-motivation within the team: joy, pleasure at work, self-accomplishment ( autonomy, valorization of initiatives) 
  • Give positive feedback
  • Favor teamwork
  • Fight toxic behaviors

On this background, it is clear that Yoga and Meditation have a great potential for development on work premises: which are the companies that do not have to face stress at work and burn-out issues? But even beyond that, how to ignore that this analysis by corporations, identifying the need to develop wellness at work, is still far from acknowledging the real potential of the targeted tools.

So, not only Yoga schools are to approach Human Resource managers of corporations to suggest Yoga-at-work type of programs or better, partnerships, they also need to expose what these managers have not yet fully comprehended.

At Sri Sri Yoga School is teach that Yoga is an art and a science that allows you to feel a real inner joy: a yoga that is at the same time simple, accessible, fluid, and powerful. It was developed by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Indian master and founder of the Art of Living Foundation (the world’s largest NGO in terms of a number of volunteers after the Red Cross). 

Some of the benefits of their Yoga programs are Flexibility of body and mind, Correction of posture and body alignment, Deep relaxation, Clarity of mind and perception, Creation of lasting habits necessary to lead a happier and healthier life.

Sri Sri Yoga promotes the upliftment of the individual and the blossoming of human values ​​in society. This practice is spreading all over the world, from India to the USA, via Africa and Europe. 

Without a doubt, a far cry from techniques currently popular within the Corporate world!

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