Fun Employee Wellness Challenges 2021
The pandemic forced businesses and their employees to be more adaptive and resilient than ever before. As we emerge from this challenging time, it is vital that workforces also take steps to prioritise the physical and mental health of their staff. Not only does making time to nurture mental and physical health have physiological benefits, it also allows for greater concentration and productivity. For many, setting aside time to incorporate exercise or other wellness practices can be challenging and often, those who manage to, start losing motivation quickly. One way of conquering motivational deficits is by working towards a pre-determined goal, such as those that form the basis of health and wellness challenges.
For those who have never completed a wellness challenge before, it can be difficult to select the challenge that works best for you and your workforce. This blog will offer a selection of wellness challenges that are perfect for employees, including those offered by us here at Race At Your Pace.
Fitness Challenges
Upon the mention of wellness challenges, the first thing that comes to mind is exercise. Fitness challenges can be enjoyed by novices and fitness fanatics alike, whether they work as an incentive to begin exercising or an opportunity to hit a new personal best. Workplace fitness challenges allow staff members to both improve their physical fitness and engage with one another in a new context. Some workplaces may wish to curate their own fitness challenge based on the abilities and interests of their participants; others may choose to follow pre-existing challenges such as those offered by Race At Your Pace.
Race At Your Pace offer a host of virtual challenges that span a wide range of activity types including walking, running and cycling in addition to others! Race At Your Pace also offer a virtual challenge suitable for wheelchair users, to maximise the accessibility of the experience.
The challenges offered by Race At Your Pace can be completed anywhere, at any time within a monthly window, with a new calendar of challenges added every month. The variety of challenge options available also allows participants to select a challenge that best suits their ability or fitness goals. This way, employees can feel united in their working towards a goal while also accessing a challenge that is appropriate for their particular fitness level.
Employees could track their progress together – those who select the same challenge may even choose to compete for a prize of their choice. In addition, the virtual nature of the challenges offered by Race At Your Pace means that employees can interact and share progress regardless of whether they are working in the office or remotely. Some employees may even choose to complete the challenges together, encouraging greater socialisation within the workforce outside the workplace.
Nutrition Challenges
Forming healthy eating habits goes hand in hand with developing an effective exercise routine. Without a healthy diet, it is impossible to reap the full rewards of regular exercise. In addition, without correctly fuelling the body, it can be challenging to exercise as effectively as possible. Workplace healthy eating challenges also pose an unintimidating incentive for staff members to make healthy lifestyle changes, which are likely to transform into greater workplace efficiency.
It is important to ensure that challenges of this variety are framed in sensitive and non-triggering ways. Healthy eating challenges needn’t be about punishing particular foods, counting calories or having employers comb through food logs. Instead, challenges should simply offer a motivator for staff to make more frequent healthy choices.
Habit Building Challenges
Habit building challenges can vary from one workplace to another, depending on the things that a workforce wishes to improve upon. Habits can include anything from encouraging employees to drink more water to making a united effort to get more sleep. Depending on your office facilities, a habit builder could be made from something as simple as taking the stairs. To boost the success rate of habit building challenges, it is important to not over face participants with too many new habits at once. Keep things simple and add one at a time.
Employees could use a variety of methods to track their challenge progress, setting up google documents, ticking off completion on a physical chart, even assigning habit buddies to motivate one another throughout the process.
Mindfulness Challenges
Another variety of workplace challenge is mindfulness challenges. Encouraging mindfulness within the workplace demonstrates the prioritisation of employee mental health on behalf of an employer. Mindfulness challenges can take a variety of forms and can be integrated with any of the other challenges mentioned.
The ‘newness’ of mindful practice and mental health prominence may discourage some employees from their uptake of such challenges; therefore, it is important that these challenges are presented in flexible formats. Simple implementation of these challenges might include in-office gratitude boards, the organisation of group yoga/meditation classes, even investing in subscriptions to mindful apps such as Headspace, with participants feeding back in specific online groups or chats. Those who participate most regularly will be rewarded!
Get Started with Race At Your Pace
Feeling inspired to start your own fun workplace wellness challenge? For more information about the range of virtual challenges available from Race At Your Pace, get in touch! Our friendly and helpful team will be happy to answer any questions and help you select the challenge that is perfect for you and your team.
Once you’ve selected your challenge, head over to our website to enter!