THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Workplace stress has been plaguing IT employees for long. With soaring stress-related issues taking a toll on their health, techies at Technopark are looking at various options for tackling the issue. A special day-long theatre session was conducted recently at Technopark, organised by employees of Nest. The session, led by techie-turned theatre artist Bilas Nair, included various theatre games. Many more techies would be joining the sessions that are planned in the coming weeks. “I was working in a call centre at Kolkata for about three years. During the first year itself, the monotonous work started having its impact on me. My blood pressure started varying and nine hours’ work sitting in one place was something which I found it difficult to cope with. I even asked our HR department to allow me to take a stroll while I was on a call. ‘’Later, I took up theatre as my profession and my stint in the IT field equipped me to understand the problems of IT employees better,” says Bilas. He says that the training includes various theatre games that can be stress-busters, games for self-motivation and relationship building. “The games in a way help an IT employee to find a balance between professional life and real life. Also, there are leadership games and exercises to keep the deadline. There are young talented people in the sector who often lag behind because they are unable to perform well in group discussions and presentations. For such people, there are games that will help them improve their body language and lose their inhibitions, thereby build up confidence,” says Bilas. Venus A V, delivery manager with Nest, feels that the theatre session helped him immensely in improving the area of work that he was involved in. “I strongly feel that such sessions could help IT employees as well as people working in other professions. In theatre, we are performing in front of an audience and one of the modules is on customer relations. Unlike in real profession, here we have to make a split-second judgment as others are watching. This, I feel, will help us improve when we are in a real professional situation,” he says. Another participant, Anuradha M, says the physical involvement by way of theatre exercise at the beginning of the session makes the theatre games different from the usual management training that she has attended. “It was basically a stress-relieving session. Like in yoga, the trainer asked us to do some physical theatre exercises, which made us more involved. I found it worthy and think that such sessions once in a while could be good for IT employees,” she says.
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