Six Employee Wellness Challenge Ideas for Spring

Spring is a time of rebirth! Making it the optimal season for re-engaging employees in your workplace wellness programs. And what better way to do so than with some fun, new wellness challenges.

Here are six types of wellness challenge ideas to spark your creativity and help you refresh your programs and get your teams excited to live healthier in body and mind!

1. Hydration Challenges

From aiding with digestion and eliminating waste from the body, to helping our bodies function, contributing to weight loss, and making your skin glow, the benefits of drinking water are abundant! The daily recommendation is to drink eight ounces of water, eight times a day (or 64 ounces/day), though some believe a more recently recommended evaluation based on activity level, metabolism, climate, and weight. While is seems simple, and regular water consumption may be standard for some employees, drinking enough water could be challenging for those who drink soda and coffee all day.

Implementing a water challenge is a great way to promote proper hydration. Hydration challenges are easy to execute, simply invite your teams to replace one or more beverages (soda, juice, coffee, alcohol, etc.) with water for 30 days. You may also consider creating a seven-day water challenge where employees replace all other drinks with water or challenge for employees to set daily water consumption goals. Be sure to design a process for everyone to track and share their progress.

To help employees succeed, encourage them to set up reminders: They can set an alarm to fill up their water bottle, schedule text message reminders from their wellness program platform to take water breaks during the day, or even keep water bottles on their nightstand, desk at home, and in the kitchen.

2. Fitness Challenges

Fitness challenges are a great way to encourage physical fitness and create healthy habits! Your employees will likely be at varying levels of physical fitness, with some being in great shape and others struggling to stay active. Fitness challenges may be tailored to help all employees re-commit to their workouts, yoga practice, or whatever physical fitness activities appeal to them. To aid engagement, consider physical challenges that can be done at home, outside, or at the gym.

Encourage employees to set a weekly exercise goal for themselves, we recommend 140 minutes per week, which is roughly 20 minutes per day. This is an optimal starting point for all fitness levels and it can easily be adapted to just about any fitness level. Have employees track their workouts, time, and progress and base rewards on effort rather than results.

To promote engagement, use your wellness platform or internal communication to create a space for employees to share workout ideas, videos from some of their favorite online trainers, and even their own workout routines.

3. Feel Good Challenges

After several incredibly stressful, challenging years, most everyone can benefit from feel good challenges designed to promote mental health. And being outside in the fresh air and sunshine can help improve mood and create a renewed sense of optimism.

For a simple feel good challenge, have employees track their time spent outdoors with a goal of at least 10-15 minutes a day for a minimum of 10 days per month. Consider offering extra points for spending an hour or more outside during the weekends. Employees may track their time in your wellness platform or in a journal where they track their time spent outdoors and note how that time spent impacts their mood.

4. Relaxation Challenges

As a society of workaholics and worry-aholics, with our phones delivering a fresh dose of work (and existential) stress before bed, in the mornings, and even on weekends, relaxation time may be at an all time low. Fortunately, a couple of relaxation-themed wellness challenges can help employees take a deep breath and unclench.

Relaxation challenges may be implemented in several manners. Consider having employees pick from any number of things they consider to be relaxing and commit to logging 500 minutes (approx. 8 hours) of relaxation per month. Some ideas include:

• Mindfulness meditation and yoga
• Reading
• Listening to music (even more relaxing if done in a comfortable chair with the eyes closed)
• Listening to nature, whether it’s outside or a virtual soundscape like a Japanese garden
• Taking a long bath or shower
• Spending time on a favorite craft or relaxing hobby
• Gardening

5. Socialization Challenges

Encourage them to be more social with socialization wellness challenges. Some ideas include game night challenges, where employees participate in scheduled game nights with family, friends, loved ones, or colleagues.  Another idea for social wellness is scheduling lunches with a buddy, whether that’s one or more of their children, a spouse, a colleague, or a friend. Set a goal for a number of lunches, game nights, or other social functions and have employees track their engagements.

6. Financial Wellness Challenges

One of the most popular financial wellness challenges encourages employees to wait up to seven days before making online purchases. Online shopping has skyrocketed over the last year with consumers spending more of their shopping dollars on ecommerce sites than in stores, creating a quick pathway to overspending. You may also consider having employees work on creating a budget and setting spending levels for the month.

For questions about these challenge ideas, or for assistance with refreshing your workplace wellness program needs a refresh, please contact Epiq Risk Management.