More than 92 per cent workers suffer burnout from stress linked to their workplace, Covid-19 experiences and in personal life, said a Catalyst global survey released yesterday.

The study involving 7,500 employees worldwide showed that companies offering remote-work options ~ including flexible work locations, distributed teams, and enabled virtual work, telework, or work from home options ~ had employees reporting a 26 per cent decrease in workplace burnout, compared to those without remote-work access. Workplace burnout decreased by 43 per cent when managers show empathy to employees, according to the “Remote-Work Options Can Boost Productivity and Curb Burnout” study ~ the first in a research series “Equity in the Future of Work” from the New York-based Catalyst.

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The Catalyst report recommended suggestions to help organisations combat burnout, including up-skill managers on managing remote teams, normalise empathic listening through regular checkins, and increase opportunities among employees to share their life and work experiences.

While organisational improvements are needed to reduce burnout, corporate leaders across India ~ particularly in financial capital Mumbai ~ have gone much deeper: empowering the mental health of employees to cope with stress. “Extended lockdowns have taken a toll on employee morale,” said Ramnath Shenoy, executive director of NTN Bearing India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of the $6.5-billion NTN Corporation Group.

“Besides work-related issues in daily online meetings, I introduced other topics like yoga, daily meditation, Japanese language classes, etc.”

A practitioner of the ancient mind-purifying method Vipassana meditation (www (dot) dhamma (dot) org) for more than 27 years, Shenoy is part of the noticeably increasing global trend of corporate leaders using meditation as a powerful stress-coping tool for themselves and their employees.

The Dhamma Pattana Vipassana Centre (www (dot) pattana (dot) dhamma (dot) org) in Mumbai, for instance, that caters primarily for senior corporate professionals and government officials is already fully booked in advance until August for residential 10-day Vipassana courses that are offered free of cost to all. Meditation classes continued during the lockdown, thanks to the Internet.

“A small team of volunteers in Mumbai, Pune and other cities organised daily online meditation sessions which were attended by more than 50,000 people,” Shenoy informed The Statesman.

“A businessman, industrialist, executive or chief executive has to make many decisions in their life filled with ups and downs, but a decision made with an angry, stressful or unbalanced mind harms the business and people around,” said the former industrialist and the principal teacher of Vipassana Sayagyi U Goenka (1924-2013).

“Vipassana helps to keep the mind calm, quiet, peaceful, and harmonious, which is good for the businessman, staff and customers.”

Courtesy dedicated selfless service of many, India has become a world leader in recognising the effectiveness of meditation to benefit work, workers and workplaces. State governments, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, have issued circulars permitting annual paid leave for officials to attend 10-day Vipassana courses. Business management schools such as Symbiosis in Pune have included Vipassana as part of their training.

Many leading Indian companies, including ONGC and Mahindra & Mahindra, likewise offer paid leave for their employees participating in Vipassana courses.

“Many, many years of personal and start-up baggage, mountains of negativity and anxiety cleared up during my (first) Vipassana course,” wrote Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO of the Singapore based software firm Capillary Technologies.

“I just felt so much lighter in my head, so much more full of energy and inner peace. I don’t know why it (Vipassana) worked, but it just worked!”

Many corporate leaders like Reddy realise how Vipassana works as self-dependent inner technology to realise the actual realities in our life, instead of delusions, illusions, biased assumptions and presumptions. Instead of our usual habit pattern of blaming others and external factors, Vipassana practitioners realise how the root cause of our happiness or unhappiness is within us ~ not outside.

Life changes with this realisation. Tellingly, India’s financial capital Mumbai is also the Vipassana capital of the world with the most number of Vipassana centres and practitioners in the vicinity.