After a long day at work, most of us don’t want to exercise. But as the saying goes, ‘Healthy mind, healthy body’. It’s in a company’s benefit to take care of employee wellbeing: it improves job satisfaction and productivity. Wellbeing isn’t just about doing exercise to keep fit and active. It also includes healthy eating, and taking care of your mental health.
With the current COVID-19 pandemic, it’s easy to lose motivation to take care of yourself. It’s also more important than ever, as many of us have had to give up the activities that helped us keep mentally and physically balanced.
When deciding which activities to organise, we had to be creative as we’re all working from home - and some of us are working from different parts of the world entirely. Nonetheless, we tried to plan as many team activities as we could, both to keep each other motivated, and to take the opportunity to get to know each other better.
For a bit of competitive spirit and motivation, we organised a scoreboard and prizes for the top three participants. We had different activities planned every day for the whole month, like stretching, pilates and yoga. We did the activities on video calls, where we were able to chat as we replicated the exercises shown by the tutorials chosen. Participation in all activities was encouraged but completely optional. On the mental health side, we decided to do remote “coffee breaks” and socials. Even though working from home has its advantages, it can also make it more difficult for people to connect, as you lose face-to-face time with colleagues. Dedicating 15 minutes of work time to chat with your colleagues about something other than work can help create better relationships and improve teamwork.
Finally, because healthy eating is also essential for wellbeing, we created a Slack channel specifically to share pictures and recipes of all the healthy food we ate and cooked during this month. Everyone shared some delicious and nutritious meals!
We’re all different, and not everyone is going to enjoy the proposed activities or want to join them, but that’s fine - they are all optional.
For most members of the team, it was something fun to look forward to during the day, and a nice break which created a new energy when we got back to work.
In the end we had quite a high number of attendees. There was lots of positive feedback - most of us saw improvements in this month and most people want to keep doing at least some of the activities, even after the month is over. We’re thinking of doing at least one activity a week, alternating between mental and physical activities.
Whether you’re working remotely or in an office, it’s important to do activities focused on your wellbeing. It helps improve people’s mood, health and productivity. Not everyone likes working out, but sharing these activities with other people and competing but also encouraging each other, can make it much more motivating. Wellbeing activities organized within the company also improve team relations and spirit!
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