Corporate Wellness Challenge Ideas to Build Healthy Habits

With the rising awareness about health disorders, corporate wellness programs continue to be on the list of the needed amenities for employees while choosing their employers, especially for the employers to retain their workforce and improve their organizational productivity.

The primary aim of employee wellness programs is to help employees adapt to healthier habits to gain holistic wellness through different activities and wellness challenges.

Often, employee health is one of the principal reasons which not just affects performance and productivity at work, but also impacts the overall workplace culture. Also, the workforce turnover rate and engagement scale have been statistically proportionate to the employee health status. And so, businesses have started including appropriate workplace wellness challenges as a part of their corporate wellness initiatives to help the employees achieve wellness benefits and stay healthy.

A deeper analysis of health and wellness has helped corporate wellness companies design their corporate wellness programs in a way that the wellness challenges throw the spotlight on various wellness aspects, with the most crucial ones being –

• Move Challenges – To promote physical activity
• Munch Challenges – To promote healthy eating habits
• Mind Challenges – To promote mental wellbeing
• Financial Wellness Challenges – Offering guidance for better financial decisions
• Virtual Journey Challenges – Physical activity with virtual milestones through a journey

1. Move Challenges

Move challenges are all about encouraging the employees to get adequate physical activity. Exercise is known for its wellness benefits, however, it is not very often that we see everyone doing it diligently.

As a part of the wellness challenges, the employees are obligated voluntarily to keep going with the activities that need them to move around physically and exercise.

Depending on the age group, gender, health conditions, and other relative aspects, the wellness challenges can be assigned to the users with activities that involve physical movement – ranging accordingly from simple to complex challenges.

Simple Move Challenges

These may include activities like 30-minutes walk every day, moving away from the desk after every hour of work, taking the stairs, dancing, dusting or cleaning home, yoga stretches, outdoor games on the weekends, and more.

Complex Move Challenges

These may include tougher exercises, including squats, pushups, weight lifting, lunges, and more. The frequency of these exercises can be assigned depending on the individual’s health aspects.

2. Munch Challenges

These challenges focus on cultivating healthy eating habits among the users while giving them quick tips on how to cook healthily, plus the fun facts. Many workplaces do not realize the need to emphasize upon the eating habits of the employees. However, it should be considered, since food is an essential part to achieve holistic wellness.

Munch Challenges can have the employees participate in healthy potluck lunches, snacking on nuts, veggies, or fruits while giving up on fried foods, drinking at least 8 – 10 glasses of water every day, and likewise. Employers can also contribute to make these changes in the workplace by simple, yet effective ways.

Filling the office pantry with healthier snacks, providing nutritious caterings, planning a dinner menu for all the employees for the entire week, arranging seminars or professional talks about healthy food choices, sessions with nutrition coaches, and organizing such educational events are a few ways to do it.

3. Mind Challenges

Mental wellbeing is often disregarded as a parameter for overall wellness. However, mental health is the root cause of many physical health disorders. Emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing are grouped together as mental wellbeing, and our mind Challenges focus on boosting mindfulness.

Mind Challenges can focus on various mental wellbeing aspects. Activities focusing on stress management, better sleep, trauma-related disorders, emotional stability, and likewise, can educate and help employees overcome mental health concerns.

Assigning simple employee wellness challenges like – yoga, meditation, laughter therapy, aromatherapy, motivational podcasts, hobby sessions, along with one-on-one coaching sessions with therapists and professionals can also sort mental issues for the better.

4. Financial Wellness Challenges

A 2019 PwC Employee Financial Wellness Survey stated that almost 59% of the employees quoted financial issues being one of the primary reasons for their worries and stress, which impacts their performance at work and overall health, thus affecting the organizational productivity too.

To help employees overcome financial stress, the Financial Wellness Challenges offer guidance about their current financial health conditions by calculating their income, expenses, savings, credit histories, and other financial planning.

Since financial matters are sensitive issues, most employers handle it in private, offering one-on-one sessions with financial consultants, webinars, or seminars, apart from incentives like medical insurance and healthcare cost compensation. The rewards management system can be built to help employees gain reward points for their efforts through the wellness program, which can be redeemed as cash, e-gift cards, or other incentives.

5. Virtual Journey Challenges

Most people consider physical activity uninteresting or do not find the right motivation to keep up with the exercises. Virtual Journey challenges make it more fun and gamifying, in which virtual milestones are set through the journey. Every time the user reaches a milestone, they are rewarded with the defined rewards.

How to Choose the Right Wellness Challenges?

A successful wellness program is one which has maximum employee engagement, and this can be achieved only when the employees are excited about the wellness initiatives.

To know the best suitable employee wellness challenges, it should start by sorting users based on various health and wellness aspects, and assign the challenges or activities that the users feel will help them reach their wellness goals.

For instance, assigning 30-squats a day challenge for an above 50-years aged woman is not going to interest her. Instead, it may only cause more damage. Similarly, inviting a very healthy young employee to a diabetes educational event may be the wrong choice.

Take surveys and feedback from users to know more about their interests and wellness goals, and these results when put together with the HRA and screening reports could help in making better choices about assigning the most relevant wellness challenges, as a part of the corporate wellness programs, to employees to help them achieve holistic wellness in the right way.