Companies introducing yoga at workplace to boost productivity: Survey

As per an Assocham survey, a large corporate population suffers from anxiety, depression, obesity, hypertension, diabetes

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Ahead of the International Yoga Day, a survey has found that over 53% of corporate firms are opting for yoga sessions at workplace to boost productivity and reduce attrition rate.

As per an Assocham survey, around 45.5% of the sample population are suffering from depression or general anxiety. Obesity is the second worrisome disease, with 23% of the employees suffering from it.

The poll noted that nearly 40.5% of the corporate employees sleep less than 6 hours in a day due to high stressed levels that arise out of tough targets set by employers and cause depression, hypertension, diabetes etc.

"The number of employee from the corporate world who seek yoga classes have gone up by about 35-40% this year compared with last year (20%)," said B K Rao, Chairman of Assocham Health Committee Council.

Moreover, many B-Schools are also taking the lead from corporates to have compulsory yoga modules to minimise the stress of the candidates, he added.

"Increasingly demanding schedules and high stress levels are leading to depression or general anxiety disorders in individual lives and have wide ranging effects like daytime fatigue, physical discomfort, psychological stress, performance deterioration and increased absenteeism," said D S Rawat, Secretary General Assocham.

High blood pressure and diabetes are the third and fourth badly affecting diseases with a share of 9% and 8% respectively. Others are - Heart disease (4%), cervical (3%) , asthma (2.5%), slip disk (1%) and arthritis (1.5%).

A workplace wellness program increases employee's loyalty, improves work performance, boosts productivity and reduces attrition rate, the survey noted.

The report is based on the views of 1,500 corporate employees from 250 companies across 18 broad sectors like media, telecom and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) from Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, among others.

International Yoga Day is observed on June 21.