A worksite wellness challenge is an effective way to increase participation and involvement in your employee wellness program. It is also a great opportunity to enhance teamwork and engage in healthy competition.
Instructions
1. Set the goals and objectives of your wellness challenge. Select an area to focus on such as smoke cessation, weight management or stress reduction. Take into account your budget.
2. Determine the best method to use for challenging your employees. These can be designed as an individual or team competition. Here are three alternatives you could use:
*A point system:
With this method, you will provide a list of wellness-related activities, with each one worth one or more points. Have each participant make a daily record of their points as they earn them. For a team challenge, have the team leader calculate the average number of points earned by the team.
*A Simple Step Challenge:
Provide each participant with a pedometer to count every step that is taken throughout the day. Participants keep a daily record of their total number of steps and compete to see who will take the most steps.
*A Mile or Minute Challenge:
This will be similar to the step challenge with the participants logging the number of miles covered or minutes spent doing a physical activity.
3. Determine the incentives you will offer your employees. Your choices will largely be limited to the budget you have available (and the limits of your imagination). A few ideas for gifts and rewards you can offer include:
*Merchandise - pedometers, T-shirts, stickers, exercise bands, pins, and cookbooks.
*Perks - vacations, reserved parking space, extended lunch breaks.
*Gift certificates
4. Set dates. Determine how long you would like the challenge to run and set a start and end date. Add the date to the company calendar. Be sure to allow enough time before the challenge begins for participants to register and form teams if you are doing a team competition.
5. Determine kick off the challenge. One way to do this is to designate a day as a Wellness Day. On this date, you can provide onsite wellness screenings, workshops and hand out educational materials (flyers, brochures, pamphlets). You may also have a walkathon or other exciting activity that will motivate participation
6. Get the word out. Determine the best way to publicize the challenge to your employees and to get them excited about it. Use email, your company's intranet, posters and bulletin boards. If your budget allows it, hand out free bags or T-shirts touting the wellness challenge. Be sure to make the registration form widely and easily available. You may, for example, have it in the break room.
7. Determine how the challenge will end. A closing activity such as a (healthy) luncheon or potluck would be a great idea. It would be the perfect opportunity to hand out the incentives and perhaps certificates of participation. Set up parameters by which to evaluate the effectiveness of the wellness challenge and to get feedback from participants on improve the program for the next challenge.
