Harness Your Employees’ Competitive Spirit to Help Them Stay Healthy with these Wellness Challenge Ideas
If you want to leverage your employees’ competitive spirit (and love of prizes) to keep them healthy, happy, and productive, we have the wellness challenge ideas that can help you do so.
As all corporate leaders understand, a healthy workforce ultimately shows up in a healthy bottom line. Increased productivity combined with lower healthcare costs gives employers a strong incentive to do whatever they can to promote their employees’ well-being. For many California companies, doing so involves wellness programs and competitions that encourage employees to participate in activities designed to help them avoid illness and chronic health conditions.
But wellness programs only work if employees participate in them. Enter wellness challenges!. People love games. People love friendly competition. People love winning. Here are seven wellness challenge ideas that your organization can use to make staying healthy fun and engaging.
1. Walking Wellness Challenge Ideas
Once Fitbits, Apple Watches, and other devices started keeping track of the time we spend on our feet, more and more folks focused their energy “getting their steps in.” Take that focus, add the fact that walking proves one of the simplest, most effective, and accessible forms of exercise, and you have an easy and natural way to get your employees to maximize their strides. Correlate the competition to fun ways of measuring distance walked, like climbing Mt. Everest or hiking around Lake Tahoe.
2. Nutrition and Diet Challenges
Eating well: one of the cornerstones of being well. Organizations can encourage proper nutrition by providing healthy snack options or catering well-balanced lunches, something that California offers a plethora of. But they can also create competitions that involve earning points for reaching certain milestones, keeping calorie counts at or below a certain level, or participating in seminars or programs that educate them about healthy eating habits. Don’t make your diet-oriented challenges focus on weight loss, however, as that can be ostracizing and intimidating for many people.
3. Sleep Challenges
While some hard-working and driven people may see it as a source of pride to sleep as little as possible, a lack of sleep is one of the worst things you can do for your health. A good night’s rest is critical for productivity and overall wellness. Award points not only for sleeping for a specific number of hours, but also for engaging in activities that encourage healthy sleep habits, such as mediation, turning off phones and electronic devices, and positive nighttime eating and drinking.
4. Mindfulness and Mental Health Challenges
Wellness challenges are not only good for physical health, but they can serve to encourage mental and emotional well-being too. In these pandemic/lockdown days of working remotely and other forms of social isolation, ensuring that your employees don’t feel alone, lost, depressed, or anxious can make all the difference in their overall health. Encourage and award points or prizes for engaging with coworkers, doing mindfulness exercises, or using mediation apps.
5. Healthy Habit Challenges
Drinking enough water, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, choosing an apple over a bag of chips – all of these individual steps can become a collection of healthy habits. Make a list of things like the foregoing that employees can do throughout the workday that will encourage healthy choices and recognize those who consistently make the right ones.
6. Transportation Challenges
While it may not be feasible for all of your employees to walk or bike to work, those who can should, at least from time to time. Reward them for doing so. Encourage others to take public transportation or carpool when possible. While that may not seem like a wellness challenge idea, doing good for the environment can also do good for our health.
7. New Hire Competitions
The onboarding process for new employees can often be more of a slog than a welcome. Integrating new hires into your company’s culture and building camaraderie through friendly wellness-focused competitions involving nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle changes can make them feel like part of the team. It also shows them that you value their health and well-being.
Wellness Challenge Ideas Are Just One Way We Can Help You Keep Your Workforce Healthy
As an experienced California small business and individual health insurance broker, Preferred Insurance is committed to helping California companies keep their workforces healthy. We can answer your health insurance questions and provide practical, affordable solutions during these uncertain times. We can meet all of your coverage needs remotely and take care of everything via video conference, phone, or email.
Contact Preferred Insurance today to arrange for your free consultation to discuss your small business or individual health insurance needs.
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