from the Globe and Mail...

While dot-com culture may be a thing of the past, some of the workplace perquisites it helped popularize, such as therapeutic massage, are still thriving.

Conceived as a tactic to reel in and retain the best tech talent, on-site massage is now used by a more diverse group of employers, from police forces to banks and schools.

These organizations are pulling out portable tables to allow workers to experience what for many may be their only break in an otherwise chaotic day. They're hoping it will have an effect on the bottom line, and help employees perform better.

"It's in my company's best interest to have my employees be healthy," says Caroline Tapp-McDougall, vice-president of BCS Communications, a Toronto-based publishing, advertising and public relations agency that provides its 22 employees with biweekly shiatsu massage.

"From a productivity point of view, we don't have a lot of downtime. This was an opportunity to do something on a sustainable basis. It's a painless process which maximizes the benefits and minimizes the work disruption. It's a smooth transition [from lunch back to work] and it's efficient and cost-effective," she says.

Her company pays about $700 a month for biweekly massage treatments -- about the same that it used to fork out for office coffee, which it recently decided to eliminate.

Corporate Massage People, a Montreal company, has been in business for three years and has a broad spectrum of clients in Ontario and Quebec, including National Bank of Canada, BMO Nesbitt Burns and Bell Canada, according to Martin Messier, the firm's senior director and co-founder.

His company charges $1 a minute, for a minimum of two hours, with no travel fee. The therapists get a cut of between 55 and 75 per cent.

A common assumption among employers, massage therapists and health professionals alike is that adopting wellness initiatives at the workplace can reduce stress-related illnesses and boost morale and productivity. Yet few are keeping tabs or attempting to substantiate the claim.

Health Canada reports on its Web site a return on investment of $3.40 on each corporate dollar invested in wellness initiatives. The return is in the form of reduced turnover, productivity gains and decreased medical claims.

In a 2000 report, Health Canada found that 64 per cent of Canadian companies surveyed were offering some sort of wellness initiative.

"The paradigms around the notion of profit for a business are shifting. If that includes the wellness and effectiveness of the employees, employees are seen as not a means but as part of the end of a business development," says certified shiatsu therapist Peter Skrivanic, co-partner of Toronto-based Shiatsu On Site, founded last year.

Mr. Skrivanic says that a single 15- to 20-minute shiatsu session can work wonders for wound-up employees in need of a midday boost. That stress relief alone, he adds, should be regarded as a valuable tool for people who are living under the gun.

That includes members of the Victoria Police Department in British Columbia, who enjoy weekly yoga sessions and massages in portable chairs brought in by the therapists. The police officers pay for the massages themselves, at a cost of $1 a minute.

"It's probably more mentally stressful than it is physically stressful," Inspector Phyllis Senay says of police duty. Insp. Senay is in charge of human resources for the force. "We're not out of our cars, running and chasing after bad guys very often, but when dealing with someone phoning a 911 operator and screaming for help -- that's extremely stressful. So if they can reduce their stress at the base level, then when they're faced with stressful situations, they're much more ahead of the game."

Li Milne is a registered massage therapist in Victoria whose company, Dream Body Healing Arts, provides the police treatments. Not only do the police officers benefit from having the service performed on site, she says, but they also skip the ritual of getting undressed and slathered in massage oil.

Marlene Paglia, a teacher and a health and wellness entrepreneur, brought in shiatsu massage for teachers at the Flemington Adult Learning Centre in Toronto last week. About 16 teachers signed up, and are hoping to continue the treatments once a month, beginning in the fall.

As a teacher, she says, "you really have to give your all and you're on as long as you're in the classroom . . . Bringing something like shiatsu into the work force or into the school system is something that's new. I think it's a positive thing; people have reacted quite positively."

Although statistics, controlled wellness studies, anecdotal evidence and the growing numbers of employers implementing on-site massage would suggest this type of program does in fact provide cost-saving benefits, it doesn't tell individual employers what they themselves would save.

Dr. Richard Earle of the Canadian Institute of Stress in Toronto says in order for a massage program to be a win-win for employers and staff, employers ought to track their dollars and wellness results over a course of six months in order to see a direct causal relationship.

So why aren't more companies measuring the results of wellness programs? Many say it is because the benefits speak for themselves.

Mr. Skrivanic says: "Mind is a big part of health and at the end of the day, how can I quantify if my treatment has improved someone's morale by such-an-such percentage? We can't measure that kind of interaction. It's something that, as an industry, we'll have to start putting some focus on."

Steve Lurie, executive director of the Metro Toronto branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association, says his organization is committed to a variety of wellness plans, including shiatsu massage. He adds he has no doubt that initiatives that help people cope with stress help organizations save money and keep employees happy.

Ms. Tapp-McDougall concurs. Although only a recent devotee to shiatsu therapy, she is satisfied that she has already seen a direct impact at work, and plans to start tracking cost savings soon.

"We're seeing that people are just feeling better immediately after the treatment. The pace seems to be much better and stronger in the shiatsu weeks. I don't know whether people are physically feeling better or if they just feel like they've had a bit of a break. But you can see it."