Healthy competition among employees can be a great way to boost morale, encourage teamwork and boost productivity. In-office challenges can also help employees to build and maintain healthy habits while having fun. Below are some office challenge ideas that help employees with their health and teamwork.
Challenges around weight aren’t a great idea in the office, as not everyone will want to or be able to participate. However, a wellness challenge allows everyone to participate. Most offices will use one of two wellness challenges;
With this challenge, the aim is to use a fitness tracker every day for two weeks. Ensure you use a challenge platform that can record the data. Businesses can also consider offering a discount on fitness trackers for those who need them or allowing people to manually input steps from their phones. This challenge can improve communication and teamwork in the office, with many businesses seeing an increase in employees going on walks together at lunchtime. Remember the aim of this challenge is to simply use the health features on their phone or wear their fitness trackers each day.
The aim of this challenge is to limit fast food and eat more home-cooked meals over the course of two weeks. Businesses can encourage participants by ensuring the work cafeteria or vending machines have a variety of healthy options. Create an online space where employees can share recipes, pictures and ask for meal suggestions. There won’t necessarily be a single winner in this challenge, however, the prize could be a healthy catered lunch for those who participated in the challenge.
Encouraging your employees to look after their mental and emotional health is crucial. This shows you care about your employees, and in turn, they are more likely to respect you and their colleagues. Having an encouraging work environment improves productivity and reduces turnover, as employees are generally happier at work. Now, some employees may want to participate in an emotional health challenge but may not feel comfortable sharing things. Let your employees know that both participation and sharing of details is completely optional. Those who do want to share may even inspire others who aren’t so sure. Below are several emotional health office challenge ideas
Give each employee a notebook and encourage them to write a note of gratitude each day. Many businesses use notebooks along with a sign in the lunchroom. This sign will have a daily word or gratitude quote to help encourage the employees.
The idea of this challenge is to encourage employees to complete a 10-minute stress relief activity each day. Some businesses opt to set up a games room to help with this. These rooms often have jigsaws, mind puzzles, connect four, UNO, and other games that can be completed in 10 minutes or less.
With this challenge, employees who opt-in must aim to stop using electronic devices an hour before bed. This could be a preset time decided on participating employees, or, done as a trust-based challenge. AppDetox is one such app that employees can use to monitor this and help them to stick to the challenge.
Fitness challenges are not for everyone, however, for those who want to move more they can really help to encourage them. The office fitness challenges should be fun and accessible for everyone in the office. Consider using apps to easily track the challenge.
This challenge is simple, stretch for 10 minutes a day. Businesses should consider holding a class just before or just after lunch. Encourage all employees to attend and go through a simple 10-minute stretch routine. This helps to relax the muscles and gives employees a break. All employees that attend for two weeks get a prize or treat.
For this challenge, the goal is to not use the elevator. Instead, all participants should take the stairs. This is an easy challenge for most people and easy to encourage. Participants can then track their flights of stairs each day.
Set a step count for the week or each day. Then allow employees to join in. This allows for employees to exercise in their off time and also to walk around the office more.
When creating or starting an office health and teamwork challenge, remember that it should be fun. These challenges should inspire, and invigorate your employees, not make them feel bad. Encourage employees to form teams to help hit goals or to help motivate each other. Use the office challenge ideas above to get started, then encourage employees to choose and create more challenges going forward. It is a great idea to switch up challenges every few weeks so that everyone can participate when they want. Consider a prize for the winning team or person, even if it's just an extra 15 minutes on their lunch or an extra break.
