Your Monthly Check-Up: A New Way to Walk

Beginning in mid-June, Hinda launched its first-ever walking challenge sponsored by the Wellness Committee. The walking challenge is the first official Beta CarrotTeam event – which is Hinda’s recently formed wellness program. More than half of Hinda’s employees signed up to compete in this eight-week challenge.

After being issued pedometers, measuring stride length and participating in a weeklong trial run, employees were divided into 10 groups of six or seven participants each and the competition began. The idea is to wear the pedometer at all times and check in twice a week with designated team “secretaries” who record and save the steps using the pedometers’ included software.

Not only are there prizes for the winning walkers at the end of the challenge, but there are opportunities to win weekly if specific goals are met. For example, during Week 1 the daily step goal was 5,000 and everyone who hit that goal each day during that week was entered into a drawing. Week 2’s goal was 6,000 steps per day, with all walkers with over 42,000 steps for the week entered into a drawing for $20 in Hinda points. Each week, the step goal increases, the challenge gets harder and the prizes get better. The best part is that there is an equal opportunity for each walker to win.

When the competition wraps up mid-August, each participant of the winning team will win $75 in Hinda bucks. The second place team will win $50 in Hinda bucks for each walker. To win, each member of the team must have completed all eight weeks of the program and logged his or her steps on time. The two winning teams will have the two highest total combined steps.

Prizes for individuals include Top Performer – most steps taken of all participants; Most Improvement – highest percentage of steps from Week 1 to Week 8; and Challenge Champion – a random drawing of participants who completed all eight weeks. We will keep you posted on the big winners in a few weeks!

While it may sound simple and straightforward, this challenge is certainly not without its, well, challenges. A big one is remembering to wear your pedometer each day. Another is to remember to take it off before you do laundry or hop in the pool. Unfortunately, some of us had to learn these lessons the hard way.

But overall, the walking challenge thus far has been a success. Employees are coming together to share strategies, compare steps and commiserate over a low-step or forgotten pedometer day. And the most important thing is that people are finding ways to get up and moving throughout the day, which we desk jockeys all know is key.

Hinda’s Credit Manager Connie Iglesias says, “What’s great about the walking program is that, since teams are made up of people from different departments, it gives participants the opportunity to work with people who they don’t normally work with on a daily basis.” In this sense, it fosters a different kind of teamwork and strengthens the Hinda community as a whole.

Does this sound like a program that could be implemented at your office? Do you have a wellness initiative in place? What kinds of things does your office do to promote wellness and exercise? We’d love to hear your ideas and stories in the “Comments” section below!

Your Monthly Check-Up: Work Wellness Programs, Incentives and Social Media

Wellness incentives and workplace health initiatives are all the rage right now, with more and more companies adopting wellness programs and offering incentives to employees who commit to embarking on a healthier lifestyle. Workforce.com writer Michelle V. Rafter covers this topic in her recent article, titled “Can Social Media Produce Wellness Results?” In the article, Rafter focuses on New Jersey’s Chilton’s Hospital, which, in March 2011, entered a countrywide fitness challenge after trying for years to get its employees to better monitor their health.

According to the article, employees formed teams of six in competition with other local businesses to see who could eat the healthiest, walk the most or lose the most weight. During the 100-day challenge, participants used a private, Facebook-like social network to share results, cheer each other on and get involved socially. As an incentive to participate, Chilton Hospital offered $150 to each member of the winning team and $500 to the employee who lost the most weight. But it wasn’t necessarily the money that was driving would-be participants to sign up. “People wanted to be on the winning team,” says Julie McGovern, Chilton’s VP of Administration and HR.

The argument can be made that it’s now easier and perhaps more fun to be a part of a work-related wellness challenge or health initiative that has a social networking aspect attached to it. People spend so much of their time on Facebook, Twitter and similar sites during the day anyway, why not appeal to this interest and turn their social networking time into something a bit more productive, not to mention good for helping keep employee health care costs down.

While it’s certainly not necessary to incorporate social media into your wellness program, it is a good way for participants to interact, share results and track their goals. And as more employees are bringing their smartphones to work, it becomes easier for participants to stay connected to games and social media either on their own or in conjunction with their company’s wellness program.

With regard to the Chilton Hospital 100-day challenge, the 336 participants use an online game platform to track losing a total of 1,230 pounds, eating an additional 8,918 servings of fruit and vegetables and putting in 1,274 extra days of exercise, according to McGovern. “It wasn’t just exercise and eating better,” she says, as quoted in Rafter’s article, “People made a commitment to stop smoking, take stress management classes and control ongoing disease.”

Some companies are already reaping the benefits of employing healthier workers in the form of lower healthcare costs and fewer medical claims. According to the article, Sprint Nextel Corp. estimates it saved $1.1 million through a companywide fitness challenge launched in 2011. Read the Workforce.com article here and get more ideas about how your employees can benefit from developing a wellness program.

PS: June is Great Outdoors Month! Why not get outside and enjoy the weather and the free exercise opportunities while they last? Plan a hike, fly a kite with your kids or bike your local riverfront or shoreline trail!

Your Monthly Check-Up: Work Out While You Work

Everyone knows that leading a sedentary lifestyle is bad for your health, but when you’re eyeballs-deep in the nine-to-five grind, it’s not so easy to take a break from the computer and get the blood flowing. Sure, you get up to refill your coffee and take the subsequent bathroom break – maybe you even stop and chat with a co-worker at a neighboring cubicle – but is there more you can be doing during your workday to stretch the ol’ limbs and prevent secretary spread?

In fact, there’s plenty you can be doing, and you can make it fun instead of turning it into a chore (that’s what your after-hours workouts are for). Fran Melmed highlights five great tips for getting some exercise at work in her recent TLNT.com blog post titled “5 Tools to Help Get Employees Up and Out of Their Desks.”  

In her article, Melmed shines the spotlight on five tools to help get you up and moving during your day. Hotseat, Fitbolt and Workpace are all computer-based platforms geared toward getting employees away from their computers and into solo or group fitness activities intermittently throughout the day. “Instant Recess” is a book and concept that focuses on this very topic. And tip #5 is to bring your dog to work as an excuse to get out for walks.

Why not start incorporating one or two of these tools into your workday? Try one out and see how it feels, or mix and match a few until you find a combination that lets you take a break here and there while still meeting your deadlines. What have you got to lose (besides that fast-food gut)?

Let us know how it goes – maybe we’ll test some of these out, too!