We all know that it is important to exercise a lot. You feel healthier, fitter and you are even more productive if you exercise enough. If your employees keep themselves active, you as an employer also benefit from this. A tip to encourage sports at work is to organize a sporting challenge. But how do you do that? In this article you can read why and how you can organize such a sports challenge!
Office vs. work from home
The past few years, a lot has changed in the work landscape. Many companies were forced to let their employees work from home. As a result, many companies have come to see the benefits of working from home and they are therefore now opting for a combination of working from home and working at the office. Employees who work in an office have less movement at work than other professions anyway. But working from home makes it even more challenging to get enough exercise on a daily basis. Reason enough to do something about this!
Encourage your employees to exercise more
Your employees are of course responsible for getting enough exercise. But as an employer you also benefit from fit and healthy employees. You can play a role in encouraging exercise during a working day. You can of course decide for yourself how big that role is. But it is already possible in a very easy way to motivate your employees. Here are a few examples that could help in this:
- offer a work environment that invites you to exercise more;
- placing devices, such as a printer, further from the workplace;
- offer furniture to alternate sitting with standing or another active position;
- placing standing tables in the canteen;
- table tennis, shuffleboard, darts and other resources available in the canteen;
- encouraging sports at work with, for example, a private fitness room.
As you can see, there are a lot of tips that you could apply. You can also motivate your employees to exercise with the help of a sporty challenge.
Organize a sporting challenge!
The basis of every sporting challenge is establishing a specific goal for the employees. Consider achieving:
- a specific number of steps;
- cycle a few kilometers;
- several hours of walking;
- walks during the lunch break.
As an example, you can have employees cycle the number of kilometers to Paris. The first person to reach the number of kilometers wins a city trip to Paris! To encourage them to exercise at work, place a number of exercise bikes in the office. Or you go for a ’30 day challenge’. Who gets the highest number of steps in 30 days? You can give them activity trackers with the company’s logo for counting the number of steps. This way you immediately provide a piece of internal branding.
Motivate your employees to participate
You have come up with a great challenge, but you also want as many employees as possible to participate and exercise more at work. That starts with internal communication of the challenge. Send an email around, put up posters and walk by the desks yourself to ask if people would like to register. You can also motivate them extra by giving a goodie bag with, for example, a water bottle with print, a towel with a logo and other handy items that they can use during the challenge.
Enough inspiration to get your employees moving and to have them exercise at work. Ready, set, go!