The year 2020 was the year of illness, with the COVID-19 pandemic defining everything about our lives. All anyone in the world did last year was sit at home, worrying about getting sick, and stressing about civil unrest. That’s not what anyone would call wellness. Thankfully, a new year is here and we can now turn to make 2021 the year of wellness and health.
Nevertheless, while intentionality is a great way to start thinking about including physical activity in your day-to-day life, it will only take you so far. We are still, mostly, behind our computer screens all day. As an employer, you might want to include wellness initiatives in the basket of goodies you offer your employees, but how can you help your team members develop healthy behaviors when you’re managing remote employees? If this sounds like a quandary you’ve found yourself wondering lately, read on for some office fitness challenge advice.
Trying to run an office fitness challenge? There’s a fitness app for that.
Good news ‚Äî you don’t have to invent the wheel every time you come up with a plan to make the lives of your team members better. You probably already knew that (after all, you don’t try to calculate bonuses manually, your administrators use software for that) but you may not have thought about applying this logic to employee health. Well, if you’re looking for a great way to initiate an office wellness challenge and also track how the fitness challenge is going, you can now do so with ease.
One simple way to do this is to offer all of your team members an office fitness challenge app that they can sync to a wearable device or tracker (like a FitBit) that they may already have. Developing healthy behaviors and making the shift to a healthy lifestyle is hard enough at any time, and especially these days, so you want to streamline things. Once everyone has the fitness app and is logged into the leaderboard, it will be a whole lot easier for administrators to initiate a new challenge or keep tabs on an existing office challenge.
A little friendly competition never hurt anyone.
When it comes to employee wellness, it’s a good idea to start small, with a simple challenge that the entire team can probably take part in. Don’t start with a plank challenge that has everyone bemoaning the state of their abs. It’s much easier and manageable to start with a step challenge, for instance, wherein team members can track the number of steps they take through the fitness app you’ve provided and the person with the highest number of steps wins incentives like gift cards. While you might have ambitious fitness goals for your entire company, starting with a step challenge is one way to ease into the healthy choices (like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or getting up from a desk to walk around the room) that you’re hoping to encourage.
With a leaderboard right on the dashboard of the app, and the ability to sync the office challenge to a fitness tracker, it’s easy for employees to keep track of whatever type of contest you initiate. Not only will something as simple as a walking challenge increase the activity level of your entire team by introducing new activities into their day-to-day, but it can also even serve as a team-building exercise, which is just an additional perk of the fitness challenge you’re planning.
Send out a weekly memo with tips and tricks for healthy behaviors.
Employee wellness doesn’t begin and end with a new activity, it has to do with healthy eating habits, mental health support, and financial wellbeing as well. Whether you have a big company or a small company, you can send out a weekly memo with ideas for healthy behaviors and habits that you hope your employees adopt. Be encouraging about mental health challenges, to ensure that no one feels that they should be ashamed of any problems they’re having. When employees know that the admin has their back whatever their struggles may-be, they’re more likely to reach outdoor help before it’s too late.
It can be hard to know how to help remote employees, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Use an existing fitness app as a template for your office challenge (even if you’re not actually in the office space), and you’ll be enjoying the benefits of increased health in no time.
