Technology is making the workplace more convenient and flexible, however, it leads to a more sedentary lifestyle for employees. People who live sedentary lifestyles are more likely to have health issues later on in life. Therefore, employers should safeguard the health and wellness of their employees.

Building a company wellness program is the first step in maintaining the employees’ health. Employers should emphasize the importance of healthy behaviors among their employees and encourage them to maintain healthy lifestyles via corporate wellness programs. A corporate wellness program facilitates the organization to set up wellness challenges, regular exercise, and healthy events in their workplace. Wellness challenges include various aspects of health, such as nutrition, meditation, and physical and mental activities.

An easy way to enhance employee wellness is by creating physical challenges that improve people’s fitness levels. Here are some office fitness challenge ideas to help you design team-building activities and motivate your employees to be more active.

Office Fitness Challenge: The Path to Employee Wellness

Creating workplace wellness challenges brings many benefits to the organization. Employees will enjoy taking part in it, as well as learn a lot about how to maintain healthy lifestyles.

Here are several advantages of developing office fitness challenges:

• Boost Energy
• Increase Motivation
• Improve Mood
• Strengthen Team Relationships
• Reduce Employee Turnover Rates
• Improve Morale
• Increase Employee Engagement
• Build Good Health Habits

Tips for Organizing Your Workplace Wellness Challenges

Keep the following tips in mind when designing an office fitness challenge.

Promotion

• Do some wellness promotions at your company before launching the fitness challenge.
• Educate your employees on the advantages of physical activities and a healthy diet.
• Encourage people to develop healthy habits, like walking regularly, and having balanced meals.
• Send invitations, guides, and promotional fliers to everyone.

Execution

• Determine your challenge type. If you are not sure about what kind of fitness challenge you want to create, ask your team members for input.
• Research some company fitness challenge apps to help you manage your challenge.
• Set up a goal or target for your workplace wellness challenge.
• Decide whether you want it to be a team or individual challenge.
• Frame your office fitness challenge based on the goal you’ve chosen.
• Confirm the rules and decide how long you want the challenge to last.
• Keep an eye on the progress of your employees and keep encouraging them.
• Prizes can motivate employees to be more active. Give out some nice prizes for the winners. Find out more on step challenge prize ideas.

Office Fitness Challenge Ideas

Step Challenge

A step challenge or walkathon is a fitness challenge that encourages people to take as many steps as they can during the challenge period. A walking challenge is simple and easy to set up. The challenge can also be customized to meet your needs.

Pacer for Teams can help you create your step challenge in minutes, participants can track and view their progress in a step challenge app. The individual leaderboard will display total step counts for individuals. Daily step counts accumulate during the challenge period. Create incentives to encourage participants to make continuous fitness progress.

If your challenge is team-based, you need to consider what ranking rules you would like to use. ​​The team leaderboard can display the total steps for each team, or the average steps for each team. Total steps work best for teams with the same number of members, and average steps are better for teams with different member counts.

Evaluate the progress at the end of the challenge, and give some health-related prizes to top performers.

Collective Goal

There are a lot of opportunities to recognize individual accomplishments in the workplace, but you can also create a team or organization goal and encourage people to work on it together. Goals motivate people. By having a clear goal, people can focus their time and energy on them.

For example, take 1 million steps, or finish the distance from the earth to the moon as a group in a month. Announce the goal to all your employees, and encourage them to work together to complete it. If the goal is met, the company can donate to some charities or have a prize drawing for the participants.

Consistency Challenge

We are all aware that habits can make a difference. Set a daily fitness goal for your employees, and motivate them to complete it every day. Incentive participants based on consistency.

For example, you can set a daily goal to take 10k steps per day and the challenge runs for a month. Participants are encouraged to achieve the goal as many times as they can. Give out prizes to the people who achieved the goal the most in total or reached the longest consecutive goal during the challenge period.

Stair Climbing Challenge

If your office is located in a multi-storied building, you can challenge your employees to climb stairs. And if everything works well, your employees might never use the elevator again!

Set up a daily stair-climbing goal for your employees to complete. Reward employees who reach the goal in the shortest amount of time or who climb the most stairs. It is always good to have some fun while working.

Bicycling to Work Challenge

A bicycling-to-work challenge is a great way to promote fitness while also reducing pollution. The challenge encourages employees to travel by bicycle for a certain number of days. Provide healthy breakfasts and lunches to participants who get to work on bicycles.

Alternatively, the challenge can be opened for 30 or 60 days, and participants who cycle the most over that time can win rewards. A meaningful prize would encourage a greater public awareness of environmental issues and inspire people to move more.

The Plank Challenge

One of the best exercises for building core strength is the plank, which is convenient and accessible to most of us. Planking has various advantages, including strengthening your core, improving muscle definition, aiding your metabolic rate, improving your posture, and reducing stress. The plank challenge can be achieved without any tools or equipment.

Set up a plank challenge in your workplace. In the beginning, set a small time that each participant must achieve, then gradually extend the time. Give each of your employees a healthy snack as a small prize for completing the challenge to keep them happy.

Mini-workout Challenge

A mini-workout challenge is a great way to help employees keep fit and stay motivated. Mini-workout means that the workout can be a series of lite exercises with small breaks in between, running for no more than 10 minutes. This challenge can ensure that employees burn their calories and build good habits in the workplace.

You can reward your employees with healthy meals or snacks at the end of each challenge day to inspire them to live a healthier lifestyle.

Charity Challenge

Creating a challenge with a charitable purpose is a great way to attract every employee to join your workplace wellness challenge.

Talk to some local charities or connect them online, and sign up your team for the events. Many fitness events, such as marathons, aim to raise money and awareness of fighting breast cancer and AIDS.

Give your colleagues a sincere thank you for supporting charities after the challenge.

Healthy Lifestyle Challenge

A healthy lifestyle challenge consists of setting up several health-related activities each day. For example, you can create a water drinking challenge on Day 1, and a healthy lunch challenge on the next day.

This habit challenge can be completed in a short duration. You can mix it up with your physical fitness challenge to cheer participants up.

The Mile-a-thon Challenge

A mile-a-thon or distance challenge measures participants on how far they can walk, run or hike. 

Pacer for Teams allows you to easily create a classic distance challenge. Participants can track their daily activities with the Pacer app’s built-in GPS tracking feature. Also, Pacer integrates with the most popular wearables, such as Garmin, Fitbit, etc.

To maximize employee participation, Pacer for Teams also offers a fun and interactive distance-based Adventure Challenge. Individuals compete in a first-to-finish distance challenge. Participants will unlock new places along the virtual map as they progress through their challenges. Finishers will earn a special e-badge and e-certificate in the app. 

Final Words

Most employers today understand that employee wellness is critical to the overall profitability of their businesses. Companies of all sizes are offering a variety of corporate wellness and fitness programs to improve employee health.

If you analyze a company wellness program, you will notice that office fitness challenges are essential and worth investing in. From entry-level office fitness challenges to complicated ones, including such activities is critical for employee wellness. It encourages people to move around and achieve only good things.

Employees find that participating in such fitness challenges is not only fun but also rewarding. Moreover, with current easy-to-use company fitness challenge apps, creating and managing an office fitness challenge requires low effort from the management.

Use the 10 fantastic office fitness challenges ideas above to increase employee engagement! Making a difference in your workplace.