How Exercise Helps Productivity
Posted February 20th, 2017
As you might expect, companies are continually looking at ways to improve the performance and productivity of their employees. Some of these initiatives might involve changes to processes and procedures or other organizational modifications.
What Exercise Does
But there is actually one very simple way that has been proven to increase productivity, and that is exercise. Research has shown that exercise has holistic benefits, not just for the body, but for the mind as well.
Studies have shown that exercise actually facilitates the growth of new brain cells and the maintenance of blood vessels.
One university study showed that employees who exercised just two and one-half hours a week were able to accomplish just as much as other people who did not exercise at all, and were able to devote those hours to work.
Moreover, exercising enhanced the health of the employees, resulting in fewer absences and even a higher feeling of well being. And research backs this up. Studies show that healthier employees take off fewer days from work.
Company Sponsored Exercise
And more companies are taking note. Companies like Nike and Google now allow their employees to take yoga classes during work. At Toyota, people working on the assembly line do warmup exercises before starting work.
Advances in technology have also enabled companies to offer exercise programs to employees that are cost and time effective. One example of this is called High Intensity Interval Training. This type of exercise consists of short spurts of fast activity followed by a rest period. This enables the person to get the same effect as a long workout in a much shorter period of time. In ten minutes, you can get the same results as jogging for 45 minutes using this technique.
Not only that, because the workout is so brief, the person is much less likely to work up a sweat, and so does not even have to change clothes.
This may not yet be enough to convince many firms to allow employees to take off time from work to exercise. But as more studies are done, the additional research simply adds more evidence of the efficacy of exercise and its effect on enhancing performance.
If your Bay area technology company is looking for new talent, Bayside Solutions can help you. We specialize in recruiting workers in technology-related fields, and so we are much more effective than more general service staffing agencies at finding the right people for the job. Give Bayside Solutions a call today.
