FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Want a Break from Work…..at Work?
New Business Creating third spaces within the workplace®
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims: “A healthy working environment is one in which there is not only an absence of harmful conditions but an abundance of health-promoting ones.”¹ The American Institute of Stress adds, “Numerous studies show that job stress is far and away the major source of stress for American adults and that it has escalated progressively over the past few decades.”² “According to the WHO, the cost of stress to American businesses is as high as $300 billion, and unless we change course, this will only get worse,” says Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post.³
CHAPEL HILL, NC – October 14, 2014 — Easterling Consulting is a new business whose principal, Melinda Easterling, has a specific focus: seeing the workplace change through creating “third spaces” in large companies. And she’s done her homework.
”Human beings go to work and need to perform as humans, not as robots. Humans thrive when all aspects of health are addressed. Employers have addressed the physical and often the social, but not the mental or the emotional. Employees need downtime to recharge and refocus. They need quiet spaces in the workplace where they can let go. Employers taking care of their employees in a holistic sense equals success for all,” says Easterling.
Easterling began studying adult health and wellness in 1995, specializing in health behavior and health education during her graduate work in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was introduced to a mindfulness class in 2004 and worked individually with clients, coaching them in finding best practices for overall life balance. From her research and experience, creating corporate meditation spaces is an extension of nearly 20 years of insight and training.
Easterling points to the extensive research that supports her own instincts: “Arianna Huffington, who recently published the New York Times bestseller Thrive stated, ‘All across the country, more and more businesses are realizing that the long-term health of their bottom line is directly tied to the long-term health of their employees. Right now, about a quarter of U.S. corporations offer some sort of stress-reduction program. And those that do are starting to be recognized for their efforts, especially by employees.’
The American Psychological Association notes, “Just 36 percent [of working Americans] said their organizations provide sufficient resources to help them manage that stress. You can’t always avoid the tensions that occur on the job. Yet you can take steps to manage work-related stress.”⁴
As Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath of The Energy Project found, “When leaders explicitly encourage employees to work in more sustainable ways — and especially when they themselves model a sustainable way of working — their employees are 55 percent more engaged, 53 percent more focused, and more likely to stay at the company.”⁵ Companies like Jim Goodnight’s SAS are continually ranked as the top places to work due in large part to their leaders’ emphasis on work-life balance.⁶
“Easterling Consulting is not just redesigning and redefining office space to create a Meditation Room,” Easterling says. “We are creating a better working environment, thereby fostering a competitive and thriving enterprise. American businesses are always competing with other countries to stay on top, and investing in their employees is the answer.”
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Sources:
¹http://www.who.int/occupational_health/topics/stressatwp/en/
²http://www.stress.org/workplace-stress/
³http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/corporate-wellness_b_2903222.html
⁴http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/work-stress.aspx
⁵http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/why-you-hate-work.html?_r=1
⁶http://www.sas.com/en_us/company-information/great-workplace.html
