It’s not just about exercise and better eating habits. From smoking cessation to meditation and even financial wellness, employers have many ways to help employees improve themselves. But for all the options, it can still be a challenge to get employees to participate the way we hope they will.
Here are some great wellness challenges your team members are sure to love.
Fitness Challenges
We all know we need to eat better and exercise more, but that doesn’t make it less of a struggle to do so. Fun nutrition and exercise challenges can help incentivize employees to try a little harder—especially with the right prizes on the line.
The key is to keep these challenges short and simple. Team members will have a much easier time staying on track if the challenge doesn’t run for months on end.
Successful employee health challenges also need to be fun! Here are a few great ideas to get you started:
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Walking: One of the easier options is to encourage employees to get out of their chairs and take a walk. If your office is near a park or walking trails, incorporate these destinations. Hold participants accountable by having them take a selfie at the destination, and then upload the photos to an internal site. Walking challenges can get a lot of employees involved and help build camaraderie at the same time.
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Biking: Encouraging employees to get some added physical activity by biking to work is a popular challenge idea. To take it up a notch, consider organizing a cycling race if you have a feasible location nearby. It's a great way to foster participation at all ability levels, and you can even open it up to families.
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Climbing: Employees probably aren’t ready to take on Everest, but if your offices are in a high-rise, you can challenge team members to a stair-climbing contest. Add fun posters of some of the world’s tallest peaks at each landing for some inspiration. Establish awards like Most Stairs Climbed, Biggest Improvement, and Most Consistent Climber to motivate maximum participation.
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Healthy Competition: Does your company have a sports court? Create an interoffice 3-on-3 basketball tournament, with the winning team getting a few extra hours of paid time off. Or work as a company and create a kickball or softball team to compete against other nearby companies.
No matter what kind of physical fitness challenge you decide to implement as part of your overall employee wellness program, remember to make it fun and easy to follow. For more ideas, check out this article from Wellable.
Nutrition Challenges
Better eating habits go hand-in-hand with physical fitness; companies are often looking for ways to encourage employees to make better food choices as part of a healthy lifestyle. If your company offers on-site food service, it’s easy to select a healthier variety of meal options. However, it can still be a challenge to get people to make better choices for themselves.
Here are a few great ways to encourage healthy eating:
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Free Snacks: If your company provides on-site food service, or regularly stocks snack foods, consider covering the cost of the healthy options. Fresh fruit, yogurt, veggies and dip, and other such options are great alternatives to baked goods and other sugary alternatives. And don’t forget to encourage drinking water instead of soda and caffeine. All of these small changes can add up to a big improvement in employee health.
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Company Cooking Challenge: Appeal to your team members’ inner chef and sponsor a healthful competition based on nutritious recipes. Depending on the size of your company, you can even create a tournament bracket based on departments, or create a single-elimination challenge based on cooking shows like Chopped, where contestants have to come up with unique dishes based on the ingredients they are given.
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Involve Your Fitness Fanatics: Many companies already have at least a few team members who excel at tracking their nutrition goals and who are up on the latest trends and dietary information. Consider involving them by asking that they host a lunch-and-learn meeting to talk to others who are interested in learning the do’s and don’ts about nutrition. You can even award points to the attendees and create a reward structure based on how many lunch-and-learns they attend.
Mindfulness Challenges
Employees’ emotional and mental health have always been important. However, it’s arguably more important than ever to address concerns—preferably before they become a problem.
Right now, many people are still dealing with a wide array of emotions regarding the coronavirus, whether it’s safe to be back at work, and what the future holds. They’re concerned about the next school year and childcare, elderly relatives, and much more outside of work itself. Between March and June 2020, Virgin Pulse saw substantial increases in coaching appointments, requests for substance support, and requests for anxiety and depression support...