Lelo recently released some really interesting statistics about workplace productivity and how rather surprising factors – like frequency of intimacy with a partner – can affect both job satisfaction and productivity. If you don’t know who Lelo is, they sell products that help have more satisfying intimate experiences (is that sufficiently droll?), so they have a bit of a, um, vested interest in the subject, but still, the stats are interesting.
For example, more than 50% of American workers feel underpaid and that (though how they calculate this I’m not sure) a healthy sex life can produce up to 31% greater productivity, 37% higher sales success and 3x greater creativity.
My guess: it’s actually correlational not causal data that’s the basis for these particular numbers. That is, people who are more productive are also more sexually active, though it is questionable whether one produces the other rather than that both are characteristics of certain personality types. See what I mean?
Another factor that the Lelo stats consider is the hormone called oxytocin, the presence of which is what helps some people deal with stress calmly while others who lack the hormone in sufficient amount get super-stressed, angry and have heart attacks and other health problems. As they point out, it only takes 20 seconds of intimacy – even just a long hug or kiss – for oxytocin to start kicking in. When’s the last time you had a 20 second hug?
I’ll wrap up here by including the entire infographic for your reading pleasure. It is interesting to consider non-work factors that can affect productivity and job satisfaction, even if it’s not always the case that a company can do something about individual employee personal life…
Wow, surprising article