Business Benefits of Meditating
Meditation is a powerful for mental health, clarity, and overall well being. However, the benefits of meditation can go beyond our immediate selves and extend its powers to improve life at the office as well.
Employee Health
Meditation can make you physically healthier. Studies have shown that those who meditate often boast a stronger immune system those who don’t meditate. A stronger immune system means fewer illnesses for employees, which means fewer sick days from the office. Additionally, improved employee health keeps insurance costs down and leads to a more positive office moral.
As for employee mental health, the positive benefits of meditating are clear. The ability to drone-out the static noise which clogs our day through quiet reflection provides an avenue for less stress and heightened creativity. Additionally, quiet reflection allows for more clarity and focus which helps employees better tackle the task at hand.
Office Dynamics and Increased Productivity
As Meditation Den has previously noted, “If you’re looking for an effective way to get more done in your workday in a more efficient manner, meditation can be a practical solution. Meditation can reduce anxiety about your job and help you identify priorities that you can act on one at a time instead of worrying about everything and accomplishing nothing.”
Meditation produces mental clarity which strengthens thinking skills to foster fewer mistakes and enhances job satisfaction which leads to increased productivity and profitability.
Two important components of healthy employees and a healthy business: less stress and more creative productivity. Reduction of stress and anxiety is a clear benefit of meditation. The ability to tune out the static of a hectic day and pool one’s thoughts into a calm central string of consciousness allows for the hectic stress of a workday to fade way. Once stress and daily static fade, meditation allows for attention to focus on tasks at hand and creative ways to develop tasks in the future.
Working In Time With Retreats
With all of the benefits, it’s no wonder that retreats focused on meditation practice and training are popular among small businesses and corporations a like.
Retreats allow for employees to learn and establish meditative practices in serene setting. Meditative retreat provides insight into exploring ways to integrate meditation into office life. This will help solve conflict or provide insight into alternative therapies and healing methods to boost communication and clarity amongst co workers.
The holistic health of a business is important for maintaining healthy businesses practices and retreats are a tax deductible method of healing an office.
Deducting expenses and covering costs
According to the IRS publication 535, for an expense to be deductible, “it must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your trade or business.” A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or business.
Maintaining a healthy office is essential to a productive business. Meditative retreats provide an outlet for promoting and sustaining employee health and increasing performances. This is often necessary and appropriate for most types of businesses. Particularly those which seem to be lacking focus or a work group which lacks cohesion.
Establishing a clear set of goals shaped at strengthening company weaknesses. The beneficial properties of meditation such as increased focus, clarity, creativity, and understanding will undoubtedly strengthen almost any work group. Understanding the needs of your particular office will help establish the necessity and appropriateness of the retreat which will help provide a more beneficial experience and make deducting the expenses much easier.
In order to deduct expenses, an accountable plan must be utilized. Meals and entertainment are typically deductible to up to 50% of the cost. Sole proprieters use the travel reimbursement on line “24a and the deductible part of the meals and entertainment reimbursement on line 24b, Schedule C (Form 1040) or line 2, Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040).” Corporations include meals and travel deductions lumped with the amount claimed on the Other deductions line of Form 1120, U.S. Corporation Income Tax Return. Other types of businesses should follow instructions with regard to deducting expenses.
Meditation is a wonderful tool for increasing mental clarity and performance. Engaging in meditative retreats and meditative practices helps arm employees and businesses with those tools to provide a more productive and profitable workplace.
Author Bio
Katei Cranford is a recent UNCG graduate and freelance journalist who’s making her mark beyond academia and advising others not so far behind.
Yes sometimes we need some meditation to do, to free from stress at work. Thanks for posting some information and ideas. This is very interesting topic.
Meditation is a wonderful tool for increasing mental clarity and performance. Engaging in meditative retreats and meditative practices helps arm employees and businesses with those tools to provide a more productive and profitable workplace.
I believe that meditation is a great tool to live a stress free and healthy life. The place where I used to work had a meditation and Yoga hall. The yoga and meditation experts used to teach us yoga and meditation for two hours during the office hours. Our bosses were great!
My personal experience says when i have meditated for few months my personal performance in the work place has been far more superior than my colleagues. I used to challenge my own goals and was used to achieve them (mostly). Now its been over 6 months i haven’t been meditating, now i like to give an excuse that i am short of time, but i know i can easily give 15 minutes daily to it. Since i stopped doing it, my concentration is less, i am tired prey soon.. Thank you for the post, will start with my meditations again!
Meditation is a wonderful tool for increasing mental clarity and performance. Engaging in meditative retreats and meditative practices helps arm employees and businesses with those tools to provide a more productive and profitable workplace.
Meditation is very powerful, and I recently read an article where the top management at Oracle had to regularly meditate every day. The benefits you listed are the main reasons to meditating. I would like to add that less stress, more harmony in the team always leads to better results, and meditation can help greatly in achieving less stress.
It is time for employers and employees to recognize the the benefits (health and economic) of promoting a well-rounded, healthy lifestyle. There is a direct correlation between mental clarity and productivity. I like the idea of a staff meditation retreat, but I wonder how many employers would actually set aside the time and cost?
I used to work in a compagny, that provided yoga classes. Our boss was convinced that meditation was the key of well beeing and success. He really encouraged us to take yoga classes during luch break, wich we did. The results were great evryone were cool down, even stressed people, that used to stress evryone around them. Even if at first you think it is going to be a waste of time, in the end the benefits are important, for your health, productivity, creativity.
For me, Meditation is a great process in which bring up a freshness and ease any pain in our life… As a business woman, who are able to struggle with daily problems I need this thing…
Thanks Katei, great article. I never knew that you could have tax deduction for meditation! That is a great idea and one I will surely try. I entirely agree with you when you say that “Meditation is a wonderful tool for increasing mental clarity and performance”. I think any type of meditation, yoga, pilates or exercise clears the mind and make you more productive overall.
I work from home but find meditating pretty motivating and gives me a much needed break from being stuck on the computer all day. I think it’s definitely something all employers should look at, or even other ways of offering down time that can be used in a constructive way. After all.. if they increase productivity then they’re essentially reaping the reward anyway.
And this is how China surpasses us, while our educated elite with fragile psyches sit on their butts zoning out to the latest fad.
There is a direct correlation between mental clarity and productivity.
meditation is very important to relieve from stress these days.Meditation improves employees health as well as productivity. Small business should implement meditation at work places to increase job satisfaction for all employees
My life has changed since starting to meditate. My job is very stressful, but adding 30 minutes of meditating has improved it dramatically. Employers need to add this to their wellness program.
I can see two different sides to the benefits of meditation relating to business–on the one hand there is a kind of clarity that is brought on by giving the mind periods of emptiness, rest, and calm; as a counter part to that, focused meditation can be a time to organize and prioritize thoughts so that the right action is taken in the right time and place to accomplish appropriate goals and gain business success.