Many years ago now, both Sharon and I were involved in the world of research, data and analytics, and to a certain extent we both still are given many of our customers also come from this sort of background. It’s almost impossible to operate in the modern world without being somehow exposed to data in some way, shape or form!
it is with these roots that we still like to keep up to date with various forms of research that offer evidence and proof about various claims that are made. So it was with great interest that I came across a piece of research conducted in India about the benefits of teaching yoga principles to employees for not only their own health and wellbeing, but that of the company overall.
About the research
Researchers in India Hasmukh Adhia, HR Nagendra, and B Mahadevan started with this question…
Can adoption of the yoga way of life make a positive impact on the factors which are responsible for the performance of organizations? If so, can we empirically observe this phenomenon and provide relevant literature support to explain this?
To do this, they found a manufacturing company to participate in a research study that included a test group (75 minutes of yoga practice per day + teachings in Yoga Philosophy) and a control group (equal amounts of exercise + teachings of modern self-development techniques).
Each of the groups were measured across variables that are supportive of workplace performance: Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, Organisational Commitment, Job Involvement, Goal Orientation and Job Satisfaction. This controlled study happened over a period of six weeks.
What was the result?
“The results of the study show that Yoga has a significant positive impact on four out of five of these indicators. Only job involvement does not show significant improvement. The construct used for measuring job involvement had a Chronbach alpha of 0.613, which is an indicator of moderate reliability, which could be the main reason for not getting positive result”.
For the full transcript of the results, click here.
Sure, one positive study doesn’t necessarily mean that every company needs to rush out and start teaching everyone the principles of Yoga. However in a world where companies are looking for simple and effective ways to improve competitive advantage, it surely represents an interesting option to consider.
The thing that I really love about the principles of Yoga (see my article on What Is Yoga Really if you would like to know what I mean by Yoga) is that it is essentially free. The material is not covered by copyright or any form of patent, it is a gift to humanity that is many thousands of years old.
If you would like to conduct a similar experiment in your organisation, or you are looking for creative ways to improve team culture, get in touch with us and together we can create our own experiment.