
A commitment to stay healthy is usually associated with a New Year’s resolution or slimming down for a special event that’s coming up. However, no matter what time of year, focusing on a healthier lifestyle can be incredibly difficult in our daily lives. But what if there were incentives for getting healthy, say, at work?
More workplaces are looking into ways to keep their staff active by creating a means of healthy competition focused on bettering their health in and out of the office. Let’s take a look at just a few ways they are making that happen.
1. Office Fitness Challenges
There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, and striving together within the workplace to better your health actually makes for a shared experience. Some offices have adapted wellness challenges, finding them to actually be an important cog in maintaining employee health and valuing the long-term wellbeing of their team members.
Companies don’t need Fortune 500 budgets to make these wellness programs happen. An office fitness challenge app is easily accessible and affordable for any business to bring their staffers on board. Offices can set up step challenges throughout the week, such as awarding prizes to the employee who gets the most steps in. A step tracker can help any employee reach their fitness goal faster and be able to monitor the numbers from their daily workout to their weight on the scale.
Much like a Fitbit or Apple Watch, a fitness app is designed not only to track steps but maintain a leaderboard to monitor where you stand amongst your coworkers.
2. Group Activities
Beyond those fitness challenges, workplaces can create new initiatives designed to encourage shared experiences and group workouts regardless of fitness level. Some companies have found outlets in recreational sports leagues, creating company softball teams or basketball teams as part of a weight-loss challenge that also keeps their staff entertained with something they may truly enjoy. Some companies have found success in forming their own leagues with a large enough workforce.
Larger organizations have been able to accommodate fitness centers onsite, while others have worked with nearby gyms to create discounts for signing up for membership. Some companies even subsidize these memberships as a perk to go along with their health insurance benefits.
Other places of employment have turned to employer-based training programs and seminars about health issues to spread the message for healthier lifestyles. These programs improve the organizational health of participating employers, focusing on strategies aimed at reducing chronic illness and injury risk for overall worker productivity.
3. Health Insurance Benefits
Employers can look to encourage healthier lifestyles through the insurance plans they provide. Overall wellness can impact the bottom line when choosing an insurance company, and evaluating coverage options such as benefits for weight loss, quitting smoking, and maintaining a proper exercise regimen.
The lesser cost of your health benefits through an employer can actually be put by companies to a wider array of other insurance offerings, such as comprehensive car insurance. Whether you have a new vehicle or old, comprehensive car insurance can help cover the cost of repairs in the event of accidental or malicious damage, and even theft and fire. Some insurance carriers have policies that will consider certain items in your car as well.
Comprehensive insurance includes collision coverage to help cover the expense of repairs for the value of your vehicle and other cars involved in an incident. Accidental damage coverage for an auto insurance policy can take care of incidents like scratching your door on the way out of your driveway.
Having these insurance options at your disposal can actually start by getting healthier today to ensure your wellbeing in more facets than just what the scale is reading.