The phrase “office fitness” is relatively recent. It wasn’t used until the 1980s. And it wasn’t until the beginning of the new millennium that it became a widely accepted idea in the business world. The idea that fitness is related to business is also a relatively new one.
What, then, has spurred this shift toward wellness and fitness among big and small businesses? Simply said, research studies conducted over the past 20 years have shown the economic and social advantages of employee health and well-being.
Nothing beats the healthy competition for keeping you motivated on your health and fitness quest. As a result, many organizations offer annual fitness challenges to keep employees healthy and engaged.
Developing fun and engaging office fitness challenges is also a simple and cost-effective approach to engage your workers, raise motivation in the office, and improve mental and physical well-being.
What exactly is a Step Challenge, and what does it accomplish?
A step challenge is a fitness competition in which employees compete by walking a certain amount of steps throughout the day. The step challenge is established with the assistance of fitness monitoring software that automatically records the number of steps your employees take in a day.
Employees may follow one other’s progress on a leaderboard, which fosters incentive and rivalry.
Fortunately, there are numerous apps for office fitness and step challenges that your company may use, especially since many workers still work from home. These step challenge apps allow anyone, no matter where they are, to participate and engage with other coworkers throughout the challenge.
1. Pacer for Teams
Pacer for Teams is a virtual platform that allows you to simply build, implement, and administer step challenges for your organization.
Participants can use the Pacer Pedometer & Fitness app to access their challenges and track their physical activity on their mobile. Administrators can set up and manage the challenge via an incredibly simple web dashboard.
Through the user-friendly web-based admin interface, administrators may quickly register, create, and invite participants. Also, manage participants’ engagement and activity in one location.
From the admin interface, admins may see and export challenge data as well as create an infinite number of challenges for participants.
The step challenge, distance challenge, daily step goal challenge, virtual race, and unique map-based adventure challenges are all available through Pacer for Teams.
Pacer for Teams provides the Best Step Challenge App Tracker to compete with coworkers to see who can run and walk the most steps. Compete against your teammates to see who can complete the most steps on the step challenge app.
Built with a health and fitness tracking tool that is ideal for marathon training. Start an office fitness challenge now by combining that with a competitive spirit among employees who have similar health and fitness objectives!
Challenges Offered
- Step Challenge: Participants can compete to see who can walk or run the most steps in the shortest amount of time.
- Distance Challenge: This challenge can be done in groups or individually, who can run or walk the longest distance.
- Daily Step Goal Challenge: Participants are given points that meet their daily targets.
- Race: Pacer’s GPS is used to track and record a single distance session, and participants are rated based on their best pace.
- Virtual Adventure Challenge: Individuals compete in a map-based first-to-finish distance challenge around notable destinations on the earth.
- Create Your Own Adventure: Participants can Increase their involvement by creating customized experiences along a virtual journey.
2. FitPros
FitPros is a workplace wellness service provider that delivers physical and mental health programs to improve the lifestyle habits of employees. FitPros will create custom solutions that recruit and retain employees to improve people’s health, happiness, and commitment to their employer.
Challenges Offered
- Fitness Class Riddles: series of 5 Fitness Classes are riddled with quirky word challenges that encourage your staff to take the 30-minute class to solve the riddle and win a prize.
- Scavenger Hunt at Home Bigo: played as a virtual team – together on screen.
- Escape Room: During this experience, you will work through brain-busting challenges and creative out-of-the-box puzzles to escape the dangerous predicament you’ve collectively found yourselves trapped in (disclaimer – you won’t actually be in any danger!)
- Climb That Mountain Challenge: Challenge your co-workers to Climb any mountain from the comfort of their own hometown.
3. Grokker
Grokker is a comprehensive video wellbeing engagement solution that keeps your workforce healthy, happy, and connected no matter where they are.
Grokker empowers employees to take responsibility for their well-being by encouraging them to walk more, eat better, sleep better, support their emotional health, and alleviate financial concerns.
Grokker’s virtual step challenge allows teams to compete both independently and against one another to see who has the most steps & personally track them on your phone or website.
4. Wellable
Wellable is an employee wellness company that enables major organizations to provide interesting and unique challenges by leveraging an ecosystem of consumer technology that they already know and enjoy, such as Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Health, and others.
Challenges Offered
- Resilience Challenge: This challenge is designed to help participants discover the many ways resilience benefits physical and emotional health while encouraging them to practice five unique Resilience Exercises to help build resilience and well-being in their life.
- Move More Challenge: A traditional activity challenge still sparks healthy competition and is easy and fun for all to join, but it recognizes activity beyond steps alone.
- Stress Less Challenge: The challenge includes healthier ways of responding to stress and navigating its impact can greatly improve well-being.
- Step it up Challenge: This no-frills, traditional step challenge can be configured as either a team- or individual-based program and can range from two to ten weeks long. The goal is for participants to increase physical activity, improve well-being, and reach the top of the leaderboard by earning the most Wellable Points by the end of the challenge.
5. Sworkit
The most frequent excuse for not exercising is often having a busy schedule. You struggle to carve out time for yourself; Sworkit can help with that. The fitness software offers adaptable training plans for all fitness levels that let you integrate a regular exercise routine into your available time.
Whether it’s a brief 10-minute workout over lunch or a 40-minute guided video from a personal trainer.
Challenges Offered
- 8-week transformation challenge: for improving overall health.
- 4-week transformation challenge: customized challenges to build muscles or lose weight.
Step Counter: Sworkit Step Counter assists people in better understanding how much (or how little) they move during the day. Individuals can establish objectives for themselves and track their progress over time.
Why are office fitness challenges crucial?
Office fitness is a comprehensive strategy for maintaining and advancing staff members’ social, physical, and mental health. In the past, companies were mainly interested in managing physical ailments and accidents that occurred at work. However, this strategy has faced criticism during the previous 20 years. A more complex, comprehensive model has emerged as a result.
Office fitness and health programs often focus on three key areas:
- Short-term and long-term sickness and injury management.
- Prevention of adverse health effects.
- Health and safety regulations are stipulated by law.
Prevention programs, which cover a wide range of health issues, are a substantial departure from previous paradigms. When the word “office fitness” is used, it typically refers to this component of a company’s overall approach to employee well-being.
Lower Rates of Absence from Work
Offices that implement fitness and well-being initiatives see a 30%–40% reduction in absenteeism on average. It is commonly known that having a high level of fitness is associated with fewer diseases and accidents. Regular exercisers have a much-decreased chance of developing both acute (short-term) and chronic diseases.
Additionally, mentally well workers are more likely to stay at the office later and be more driven to finish their tasks.
Better Productivity Levels
Programs for employee health and wellness increase labor productivity in a number of ways.
Initiatives have been put into place and businesses have reported a decrease in staff errors and an increase in usage rates. In essence, “utilization” is a measurement of a person’s “productive” time.
For instance, if an employee works effectively for twenty of the forty hours in a workweek, their utilization rate is 50%.
Increased Return on Investment (ROI)
It can be challenging to quantify the return on investment (ROI) of employee wellness initiatives. The majority of studies focus on “intermediate benefits,” despite the fact that a growing body of data supports the effectiveness of wellness and exercise programs.
Although measurable in physical terms, intermediate benefits do not by themselves signify a financial return on investment.
Because of this, many companies consider office fitness challenges as fun extras rather than essential elements of a successful human resources (HR) strategy.
Higher Employee Retention Rates
The issue of employee retention is getting worse in the business world. In recent years, switching occupations has grown more prevalent among professionals, who frequently only stay with one employer for a short period of time.
Programs that promote office fitness for employees lower staff turnover. Employees are less inclined to look for work elsewhere when they are content in their jobs, which well-being programs assist to assure.
Equally important, a creative fitness program will boost a company’s appeal to job prospects, many of whom are inclined to prioritize workplace culture and perks highly.
A fitness challenge app is all it takes to improve workplace wellbeing
Everywhere we go, including the office, we all make decisions about our health and wellness. You can boost participation in your programs and encourage greater employee health by integrating the correct office fitness challenge app into your workplace wellness programs.
Even with a jam-packed schedule, fitting in a workout is now simpler than ever thanks to fitness challenge apps. Apps can support your members, simplify their workout routine, and enable them to monitor their own progress and achieve reasonable goals.
Fitness challenge apps are a terrific method to promote a healthy lifestyle in all facets of life, from nutrition to exercise, with personalized workout routines, live-streaming classes, and expert-guided workouts.
Additionally, happier workers contribute to a healthier bottom line.
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