Author: Ellen Wulfhorst
Publication: Reuters
Date: Jun 9, 2006
URL: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2006-06-09T125216Z_01_N09410434_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-WORK.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
One U.S. West Coast marketing agency encourages
employees to stop work and duck out for massages, while at one New York hedge
fund, workers break during the day for yoga classes.
More companies are offering employees the
on-site pleasures of massage and yoga, not just to make their staff happy
but to be competitive and even boost the bottom line.
Such programs, once the provenance of nontraditional
companies but now popular in bastions of business, help retain employees in
a job market where they might easily leave to work for a competitor, companies
say.
"We have to do whatever we can to keep
our employees happy. There's a lot of competition right now in our industry,"
said Tracy Cote, head of human resources at San Francisco-based Organic Inc.,
a digital marketing agency that is part of Omnicom Group Inc..
"There's been an upswing in the market
in the past 12 months. Business is better for us, but business also is better
for our competitors," she said. "It's all about recruiting and retaining."
Organic first offered on-site massage once
a month and, due to demand, increased to twice a month. Now it's grown so
popular the company is considering offering it every week.
In a sign of their appeal, programs such as
on-site massage -- when a company may hire a licensed masseuse to set up shop
in a spare room -- typically show up as desirable factors in lists of the
best U.S. places to work.
Companies are digging deeper into their pockets
to pay for such benefits, said Meredith Stern, a partner at Infinite Massage
in San Francisco.
ADDED PERK
"With the economy jumping up again, we
have noticed that companies are adding this as a perk," she said. "They're
trying to find ways to spend money on their employees to keep them, because
it's harder to replace somebody."
A survey by Massage Therapy Journal found
at most companies that offer massage, more than half added it in the last
five years.
In or out of the workplace, some 47 million
Americans got a massage in a 12-month period that ended last July, up by 2
million from the previous year, research shows.
"My argument is, you're going to do much
better in terms of productivity if you allow your employees to get up and
move around for a little bit, and it's better than smoking a cigarette or
even having a cup of coffee," said Stern. "But I don't really have
to make an argument these days."
In New York, a number of hedge funds offer
employees massage or yoga during their work days.
"It's wonderful, it's a stress reliever,
it's good for employee morale," said a worker at one hedge fund.
Research shows massage can lower stress, tension
and fatigue, and one study in the International Journal of Neuroscience showed
people given massage therapy proved more alert and calculated math problems
faster and more accurately.
Demand is on an upswing, said Michael Wald
of Namaste New York, which offers anti-stress programs for offices.
"What I'm seeing is increased budgets,"
said Wald of his business clients. "Each year it has increased.
"I don't have a CEO saying, 'We made
X amount of dollars more because of this. It's too hard to quantify,"
he added. "But morale and the atmosphere are better, and we're seeing
a decrease in absenteeism as well as attrition."
At Organic, Cote compared the value of massage
to an allegory about two people cutting down trees.
"One of them stops to sharpen their saw,
and their tree is going to get cut down faster than the one who doesn't,"
she said. "That is true about the workplace."
((Editing by Eric Walsh; Reuters Messaging:
ellen.wulfhorst.reuters.com@reuters.net)
