How to Run a Great Corporate Wellness Week
And other corporate wellness event ideas
Whether your organization does a wellness fair yearly, quarterly, or if teams can create their own wellness events as part of team meetings or retreats… here are some ideas for you and your team!
Annual Corporate Wellness Fair
Especially if you only have a wellness event once a year, it’s a good idea to survey your employees to see what activities or resources they would most like to see. Some ideas for corporate wellness fair events include:
Chair massage (very popular!)
Chiropractic evaluations onsite
Blood pressure screening
Nutrition counseling
Introduction to mindfulness meditation class
Yoga class
Flu shots
Healthy snacks (juice shots, mini smoothies, or even just fresh fruit)
I also recommend sending people an invite a month in advance, a week in advance with a reminder, and a calendar invite that includes a notification anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour in advance of the event, to improve attendance.
For remote employees, you might also consider setting up a remote version that could include a doctor or nurse “ask me anything” 15 min time slot, and a $25/person wellness reimbursement with a challenge to take a photo doing a health activity and share it on an internal network, for example.
Quarterly Corporate Wellness Day
For a quarterly wellness day, you could pick some of the ideas from the annual event, and either rotate among different ideas or just keep the most popular in the rotation.
What activities you pick will likely vary by your budget, but the important thing is to encourage people to integrate wellness activities into their lifestyle.
Wellness as Part of Team Offsites or Retreats
There’s a saying that “sitting is the new smoking.” The benefits of movement can’t be underestimated. So why do a corporate offsite where you’re sitting all day in a dimly lit hotel room with hundreds of slides?
Consider incorporating physical movement as part of your team retreat. Business Casual Yoga(TM) incorporates mindfulness, breathing exercises, and yoga-inspired movements to improve attention, reduce stress, and address common issues that come up when we sit all day at computers.
Ideas for Wellness Event Giveaways
If you want to incentivize people to attend an event, or as a prize for participating in a wellness challenge, here are some ideas from low cost to high value:
“Gift certificate” to have a 30 minute ‘walking meeting’ with an executive
Towel with your company logo
Healthy recipe books (like this 30 day meal plan and recipe guide for women’s health, from the founder of Yin Wellness)
Reusable water bottle
Sticky socks (good for barre classes)
Yoga mat holder
Free year of membership to Headspace (a secular meditation app)
Subscription to a healthy meal service (like Green Chef, which is organic, or a community supported agriculture/CSA box like Farm Fresh to You)
Noise-canceling headphones (Bosei s top of the line, and don’t crush your ears or give you a headache like some cheaper models)
Free 6-12 months of gym membership
That said, I think one of the best perks I’ve heard about is a “wellness allowance” where employees can spend a set amount of money (such as $50 or $100/month) that the company reimburses as part of payroll. This is a great perk because it gives people the choice about how they want to take care of their health, from archery to Zumba. My opinion is that when you give people a choice about how they can invest in their health, they’re more likely to actually do it.
Parting Thoughts on Corporate Wellness
One of the more under-looked elements of corporate wellness is in mitigating the sources of stress. Wellness activities and what people do as individuals are a part of that, but often the source of stress is something that departments like HR and Finance have some control over: resourcing.
I encourage you to work with your company to enable appropriate resourcing for roles so that working 40 hours a week is the norm and not the low end of the scale. That’s my #1 wellness tip that you may not have thought of : )
Take care!
And contact info@businesscasualyoga.com or follow @BizCasualYoga on Twitter for any questions or comments.