As the world moved to working from home during the pandemic, screen time steadily increased. One study even found that people were spending an additional three hours in front of their computers. You would think, this meant more work was getting done. But unfortunately, even though people were spending 30% more time working, their productivity levels declined and there wasn’t any change in the output. Which simply meant that people were spending more time doing the same amount of work. All of this was compounded by the fact that stress levels were steadily increasing resulting in more people feeling burnt out, depressed and anxious.
So, is this our new normal? Because while the situation was aggravated by the pandemic, it only provoked an already existing problem–that we are facing a mental health crisis. A few years before the pandemic an Assocham study found that 42.5% of the Indian private sector employees suffered from depression or generalized anxiety disorder. That’s nearly half of corporate sector employees, bearing the brunt of an unsustainable culture, lack of work-life balance, inactivity, high pressure, and financial insecurity. However, there’s a silver lining.
Because while the pandemic pushed everyone over the edge, it also brought these problems into the spotlight. There’s greater awareness and understanding today about mental health and many organizations are taking the lead in creating holistic and effective wellness programs for better employee health and wellbeing. Because healthy and happy people mean more productive and sustainable businesses. As per a 2021 Wills Tower Watson report, a clear majority of employers in India (78%) plan to use their wellbeing programmes as a differentiator in three years, compared to 22% who are doing so today. In fact, taking care of employee mental health is a necessity now, as is clear from the WHO estimates predicting that India can suffer economic losses of up to one trillion dollars from mental health issues by 2030.
This is a welcome shift from the don’t ask, don’t tell culture around mental health. It gives us an opportunity to course correct before it’s too late and make sure our working environments are conducive to our long-term physical and mental health. Already we can see initiatives being taken by India Inc such as offering free mental health counselling at the workplace, proactively giving employees days off to reset and recharge, and creating a culture of inclusivity by extending medical benefits to partners of LGBTQ+ employees.
Practices like Yoga are now a lot more popular in the workplace as yoga offers a holistic approach towards stress management and increased productivity. Yogic postures help release tension and stiffness from the body, pranayama or breathing exercises are very effective at calming down the nervous system, and meditation techniques help improve concentration and focus resulting in better decision making as well as resilience towards stress and anxiety.
So, reduced productivity and increased anxiety is certainly a challenge we are all facing today. But the future can be different if we as individuals and organisations at large start taking corrective measures today to improve our quality of life tomorrow.
The writer is a yoga and ayurveda lifestyle specialist, founder – Yoganama.