Are your workplace wellness perks just a sneaky way for your boss to get more out of you?

HAVE you noticed lunchtime yoga and mindfulness classes springing up in your workplace? Watch out. Your boss could be sneakily getting you to work more.

Supplied Editorial Meditate. iStock

ARE you working hard enough? Smart enough? Long enough?

If you’re anything like the average Australian, you’re working longer hours than ever before. And you don’t have to be slaving away in the recently exposed Mordor of Amazon.com to be stressing about how your workday follows you on your smartphone all the way from the office to the dinner table and right on into the bedroom.

But while there’s endless encouragement out there from wellness experts to unplug, leave work at work and get your life in balance, when it comes to the responsibility for managing your work hours, your boss is most likely pointing the finger straight back at you. Only this time they’re doing it with chanting, candles and scented oils.

Have you noticed mindfulness classes, lunchtime yoga and stress reduction seminars springing up in your workplace? Corporate giants like Target and the major banks have started to offer their employees perks like meditation classes, and if they haven’t already popped up at your work, they’re likely to be on their way.

Evelyn Bishop and Andrew Double inside the offices of Facebook Australia, King Street, Sydney, today.

Mindfulness in particular is big business right now. And while there’s really good evidence that it can help with everything from stress to heart disease it’s being used by many companies whose goal is not your wellbeing but their bottom line. In other words, while you’re learning how to slow down, tune in and radically accept your current reality, your boss may be expecting you to use these ancient stress reduction strategies to speed up, tune out and drive yourself harder than ever before. Please don’t fall for it.

Almost every person who walks through my practice doorway is stressed out at work. And so they should be. Even though most of them have tried their best to work out a way to balance their work with the rest of their lives, many of their workplaces have squeezed their personal time into a corner too small for a cockroach to hide in. It’s perfectly normal and human for them to be stressed out. If they weren’t stressed they’d be robots.

So while most practice days I spend at least some time teaching people simple mindful

practices that can help them to reduce their in-the-moment anxiety and calm their out of control emotions, this is just step one. The next step is always the hairy dilemma of how they can find a way to work less. I can’t in all conscience pretend that counselling and mindfulness will help to lower their stress levels if they’re being asked to work inhuman hours. There just simply isn’t a cure for overwork except to work less.

So if you’re being encouraged by your boss to relax, breathe deeply or manage your time like a mother of seven when you dare to mention that you’re just a tad overworked, please don’t be fooled. No amount of employer-subsidised ohming through your lunch break is going to make up for the long hours you put in. Even meditating like a committed monk won’t protect you long term from the effects of too much work.

People fought long and hard in this country for reasonable working hours and for the things we used to take for granted like weekends and holidays. So while closing your eyes and breathing consciously can help you manage the trials of the workplace, make sure you open them long enough to see what’s really going on in your office.

Zoe Krupka is a psychotherapist. Read her blog at www.zoekrupka.com