What Is Corporate Massage Therapy and Why Should You Consider It?

There are pros and cons to all kinds of activities that businesses take part in, all in the hope of positively promoting the well-being of staff. Not all activities fit all employees however, and so it pays to have a program of ideas for sampling by your staff team.

There is one activity that on its introduction to a workplace, from the factory floor to the board room is proving a hit – corporate massage, also known as office massage or workplace massage.

Onsite Plus corporate massage is just one example of many office based massage companies that can testify to the power and impact of introducing this therapy to the workforce.

Confusion over what corporate massage is (and is not), is still rife and thus, people steer clear basing their decision on assumptions that are wrong. By doing so, companies are missing out of a powerful tool for promoting and maintaining staff well-being.

What is corporate massage?

Corporate massage is not the same as the therapeutic massages opted for at spa days. Like all things, the desired outcome of a session informs how the massage is given.

Spa massages involve de-robing, and the use of essential oils to promote relaxation through both the power of touch and smell. The touch of the massage is light, but still delightfully therapeutic and relaxing.

Corporate massage does not involve employees taking clothes off, or soft music, candles and oils. Chair-based massage, the type many businesses opt for, is a massage given over the top of clothes with the recipient sitting face forward in a specially adapted chair, normally provided by the massage company.

The massage lasts between 15 and 20 minutes, and focuses on specific areas of the body that tend to be under strain from working in an office environment. The back, shoulders, arms and hands for example, can be under all kinds of strain, not necessarily from lifting a heavy weight but from more repetitive style tasks that need to be completed daily.

Chair massage is based on Swedish massage, giving deep massage without pain, that increases blood flow to muscles, invigorating them but also relaxing them at the same time.

Swedish massage has a long and respected history, its pedigree is well-known within therapeutic circles as being the massage that can deal with many different kinds of aches, pains and issues with the soft tissues of the body.

Why bother?

On one hand, this all sounds delightful, romantic almost to think that your staff team can be massaged back into the energized team you want and need them to be.

But, you have a right to be skeptical. Massage after all, is associated with people falling asleep or feeling so relaxed that they spend the rest of the day ‘just relaxing and chilling’.

This is not the idea behind corporate massage. In effect, office-based massage is about the mind, just as much as it is about relaxing tense muscles in your employees.

Massage and the power of touch has been around for a long time. Many hundreds of years in fact. As a healing therapy, the power of touch was thought to have been used in India in around 3,000 BC, if not before. Middle Eastern cultures as well as across Asia also used the power that deep, therapeutic massage could bring.  If you take a moment to examine all cultures and peoples across the millennia, you will find that massage is part of their healing and health systems.

It still has the potential to be that today – and now that you know that office based massage is not the same as a day at the spa, what are the benefits that corporate massage can bring to your staff teams, and your business?

The benefits of corporate massage

• Invigorate and relax staff

An immediate benefit is that the deep tissue massage can relax and soothe away tension, but invigorate the body at the same time. You will notice how much more relaxed people are, whilst being productive.

• Productivity increases

Staff productivity is no longer just about getting as much as possible out of people in a given length of time, but about efficiencies and how they get things done. There are all kinds of things that you can do to increase productivity but, studies have proven that a relaxed, invigorated and valued workforce gets the job done better in the long run.

• Valued

A valued employee is a happy employee.

And yet, so many work settings seem to thwart this from every angle. It is almost as if allowing someone time to relax, or time away from their desk will set a precedent for laziness and a lack of work.

The opposite is true; corporate massage is a brave step forward for some companies but then, after a few months, they wondered why they were reticent about diving into the world of corporate massage. Employees are not only absent less often, but they are being retained for longer and, people will also want to work for your business too. With an engaged workforce and strong culture of wellness, you will have employees who want to stay and you will also have talent knocking at your door.

Corporate massage is an investment in your most important asset – your staff. There are many other benefits to corporate massage, some specific to a business and company culture.