In an office environment, it is important to promote a team culture that encourages health and wellbeing.
However, in today’s day and age, where so much of the workplace exists online, employees can often sit physically inactive for long periods of time, which can be detrimental to mental and physical health.
So what should you do?
You can start by encouraging physical activity through group workout challenges.
- Group workout challenges can offer much needed community, while also providing mental and physical health boosts for the entire team.
- Releasing endorphins regularly, connecting with colleagues, and staying accountable to health goals offers the chance for your employees to thrive mentally and ultimately increase productivity.
- You can get your team moving by organizing a specific office workout challenge that invites members of your work community to collaborate and hold each other accountable.
What is an office workout challenge?
- Office workout challenges are when members of your organization commit themselves to a specific individual or team-based fitness goal that is measurable and achievable, typically in a timeframe from one week to one month.
- You may have heard of some companies doing a full body 30 day workout challenge, while others do a simple 2 week workout challenge to get employees motivated.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of great workout challenge ideas that you can easily implement for your company.
Daily workout challenges
Having easily measurable, achievable, and accountability centered daily workout challenges can be the first step to fostering your team’s unique fitness goals.
Some ideas you might consider for daily workout challenges:
- Having your employees take the stairs, instead of the elevator, keeping track of how many flights they take each day.
- Measure the length of your office space from one end to the other, challenging your employees to tally how many times they cross it each day.
- Utilize step trackers to see who has walked the most distance over the course of each day.
Monthly workout goals
While daily workout goals are a great start, monthly workout goals offer an opportunity to cultivate camaraderie, accomplishment, and wellbeing at your organization over the long term.
Here are some ideas for you to consider for monthly office workout challenges:
- Have your employees track how many monthly steps they take, both inside and outside the office.
- Come up with fun prizes to give away to the winner and all participants.
- Start a running club that commits to run together at a specified park or track, before or after work.
- Keep track of monthly group progress and share the results with your team!
- Keep track of who climbs the most stairs over the course of a month.
- Offer a prize or incentive to the winner and participants.
Company workout classes
Another fun way to get the creative juices flowing is through group physical fitness classes. These can take many forms, but there are some favorites that never disappoint. Some popular activities include:
- Group yoga classes
- Group mindfulness exercises
- Group stretching
- Group dance classes
- Group cycling classes
Each of these options offers a great break in the middle of the day that can spark creativity, joy, and productivity.
These activities create space for employees to make new friends and discover new mechanisms that can boost mental and physical health.
Company sponsored sports teams
Another fun way to get your organization moving is to create a company sports team. This is a classic way to spark healthy competition and facilitate physical activity.
Some ideas you can consider adopting are:
- A soccer league
- A basketball team
- A softball team
- A ping pong team
A side note about technology
With the ubiquity of smart devices, it is easier than ever to bring people together through exercise, online!
There are many countless apps, activity trackers, and message boards that offer ways to get your employees connected to healthy activities, in order to build connections both inside and outside of the office.
While these simple tips and existing resources are great for the beginning of your team’s wellbeing journey, you need to think strategically about partnering with organizations that can foster long term wellbeing support and mental health infrastructure for your organization.
Grokker has it all
Grokker takes all the work and stress out of fitness themed workplace challenges with its holistic and easy to implement approach.
- Grokker’s patented video technology focuses on behavior changing scientific approaches that drive measurable results.
- With a library of over 4000 mental health, fitness, nutrition, sleep, and financial wellbeing videos that meet a wide range of abilities and goals, your employees will never run out of ways to connect and recharge.
- Grokker offers a real time reporting dashboard and a customized company interface, so that you can track organizational and individual progress towards daily and monthly workout goals.
And since different people have different abilities, interests, and goals, Grokker offers wellbeing challenge options for employees who aren’t able or willing to participate in traditional fitness activities — there’s something for everyone in this truly inclusive solution!
At Grokker, we like happy customers and we know that happy customers make happy employees. So meet your employees where they are and partner with Grokker today for your organization's wellbeing needs.
To find out more information about our holistic, cost-effective and easy to implement approach, check out our website and sign-up for a live demo today.
