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Delivering feedback to employees for performance issues and causes and can be a challenge. Even the best leaders struggle to give feedback effectively, but providing guidance that helps the recipient achieve a positive outcome is necessary. Here are some tips to help the next time you need to plan a sit-down with someone.
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Many organizations incorporate competitions into their workplace wellbeing programs. These competitions can be a way to engage employees, build teamwork, and bring a bit of fun into the workplace. In fact, research demonstrates that workplace wellbeing competitions can result in decreased absenteeism, reduced stress, and lower health care costs. These competitions can also increase job satisfaction, increase brain power and performance, improve employee sleep, increase employee retention, and foster team building. And these benefits can be found regardless of whether your employees are in the office or working from home.
Workplace challenges can be done on an individual basis, a department level, or even an overall team goal for the company. It’s always nice for there to be some sort of a prize associated with the challenge, but you can be creative and find inexpensive options. Have fun with it! For example, one company we work with bought an incredibly ugly blazer from a thrift shop. This blazer is passed from champion to champion after each wellness challenge. The employees love the honor of having the championship blazer hanging in their cubicle. Another company created a homemade trophy that is displayed in the winning department. Others provide gift cards, bonuses, gym memberships, and self-care rewards to winning participants. Just remember to find a reward that is meaningful to your organization.
There are a great number of well-being challenges that you can create for your workplace. Many require very little in the way of cost to the organization to run too. Here are fifteen different workplace challenges you can start at your organization to build the well-being of your colleagues.
Physical Fitness Challenges
1. Step to It – Challenge employees to get the most steps into their day. Many people now wear fitness tracking devices or can monitor their steps using their smart phone. Pedometers can be obtained inexpensively as well – and can be customized with your company logo! Set up the challenge to encourage the most steps in a given month by individual and/or department. You might consider a special reward for everyone if the entire company hits a certain number of steps. Partner this activity with encouragement for workers to walk on their breaks.
2. Plank You Very Much – Planking is an exercise that is great for the core and can be done quickly and without any equipment at all. Employees can track the amount of time spent holding planks and compete for amount of time total over a given month as well as the longest time spent planking. This is a great one to use as a team building activity. Employees can earn bonus points for sharing photos of their planking in unique locations.
3. Work it Out – Encourage employees to engage in any exercise activities that they enjoy and track the minutes spent doing those activities. This can be a great activity because it encourages individuals of any fitness level to participate at what they are most comfortable doing from simple stretching to running marathons. It’s also great opportunity to give out water bottles or other fitness items with the company logo on them.
Nutrition Challenges
4. Drink Up – Encourage employees to drink the daily recommended 64 oz of water each day. They can track individual ounces or they can record the number of days that they hit the goal. Set up special water stations around the office with infused water (try water with citrus slices in it) or sparkling water to keep it interesting. It’s another great opportunity to get out those company water bottles!
5. See Ya Later Soda – Help your employees say goodbye to their soda pop addiction by holding a challenge to give up their daily fix. Employees can record each day their abstained from drinking soda pop. Of course, this works best in offices where the soda drinking is common place. Other offices may find that their daily coffee run or morning doughnuts are where the employees wish to cut back.
6. Eat your Fruits and Veggies – Americans rarely get the recommended number of fruits and veggies in their diet, so challenge your employees to make it happen. Have them track the number of servings of fruits and veggies that they eat each day. Consider challenging for the greatest number possible or meeting the 5-a-day goal. Offering healthy snacks in the office like a veggie tray or a salad bar during this time can be a great way to encourage success. Employees may decide to go out to lunch at a local salad bar for some off-site bonding too!
Mindfulness Challenges
7. Unplug and Unwind – Encourage employees to turn off their screens and spend time relaxing in other healthy ways. Employees can record the number of hours that they shut down electronics and read books, worked puzzles, gardened, etc.
8. Gratitude Goals – Have employees create a daily challenge to list three things that they are grateful for each day. Employees can earn points for each day that they complete the challenge. Consider a reward for a certain level of points earned for the company. Consider sending employee submitted thank you shout outs in a monthly email.
9. Meditation Minutes – Foster a more focused environment by encouraging employees to meditate daily. There are free apps like Insight Timer or Calm that can be used for those new to meditation (and those with experience too!). Consider a daily challenge of meditating for at least five minutes.
Giving Back Challenges
10. Simple Acts of Kindness – Challenge employees to engage in simple act of kindness. Purchase a stranger’s coffee order. Carry an elderly person’s groceries for them. Cut your neighbor’s lawn. Small acts have a big effect on both the recipient and the giver.
11. Community Cares – Volunteering is good for the community and for the heart. Set up a volunteer challenge for the departments at your workplace. Can each department engage in a monthly volunteer opportunity? These can include opportunities such as a departmental jog/walk in a charity 5K, visiting at a nursing home, beautifying the community, or serving at a soup kitchen. This is a great way to involve employees families as well!
Financial Challenges
12. Feed the Piggy – Encourage employees to set aside a dollar a day to build their emergency savings account. While we know the importance of having six months of our salary set aside, most Americans aren’t even close to accomplishing that. See how creative your company can be at developing ideas for saving that extra money. Set a company-wide goal for the amount of total dollars saved.
13. Home Chef – It’s not a surprise that it costs significantly more to eat dinner out than preparing a meal at home. And cooking at home can offer healthier options too! Challenge employees to cook at home and not dine out – offering incentives based on the number of days in a month they cook at home and avoid dining out. Send out weekly recipes to encourage and keep employees motivated. They’re waistline and their wallet with thank you!
General Well-Being Challenges
14. Break a Bad Habit – Have employees identify a bad habit they have that they’d like to break or cut down on. Some may wish to stop smoking. Others may consider cutting back on alcohol. Others may decide that now is the time to stop procrastinating! Have the employee identify the habit that they’d like to change – and track their weekly progress. Form teams of those who are interested in changing similar bad habits to support and encourage one another.
15. Get Some Shut Eye – Most of us fail to get the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Whether that’s due to late night hours working or too much time spent in front of a screen, it’s causing major health problems. Challenge employees to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep each night. This can be a great one for fun prizes and incentives such as sleep masks, slippers, pillows, and throw blankets.
There are so many options for workplace wellbeing challenges. Consider trying a challenge in your workplace each month or two and rotate between the different categories of wellness challenges. Let us know how it works in your organization!
We at Bauman Consulting Group just kicked off our May workplace wellbeing challenge. We’re teaming up with the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash to compete for the greatest number of steps taken in the month of May. This is part of a larger effort by the college to raise money for scholarships. We’ll be posting our weekly numbers online each week. It’s not too late for you to join us! You can register online at https://foundation.uc.edu/UCBAStepsChallenge. Let’s get moving!
Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, prefer working alone vs in a large group, or consider yourself a follower and not a leader, the chances are that you have been part of a team at some point. Between school, family, sports, and now work which can even include being on a global remote team at times.
With all the various types of teams we end up on in life, the question isn’t whether or not we want to be on the team but rather how to be on the team. Enter: team building. Team building isn’t just trust falls and introducing yourself with 2 truths and a lie. Team building is taking time to really understand your own individual role and how the team operates as a whole with everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.
Let’s start by looking at the individual. Do you know how you are on a team? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are you comfortable performing for the team? Identifying these things in yourself, through self-reflection and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, can help gain an understanding of everyone that makes up the team.
Next, it is important to take a look at the team as a whole. What are the team dynamics? How does the team communicate and handle conflict? These are important things to know when trying to build a team or examine a team. The Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey 2.0can help with this.
Third, examine the functioning of the team as a group. Perhaps your team is falling into some of the common traps that teams can fall into - also known as the Five Dysfunctions. You can take proactive steps to address these dysfunctions and create a more effective team.
Finally, get the team together for a retreat! Taking a day, a weekend, or a week to go away with your team and focus on one another can help build team morale and work through conflict. While you might initially be frustrated with having to spend even more time with those you work with, the long-term benefits of connecting with the team outside the office quickly outweigh the annoyance.
Interested in focusing on your team? At Bauman Consulting Group, LLC we offer workshops to help your company with their team development. Please contact us with any questions and for further details!
Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to discuss effective team dynamics; explore their Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) results; identify the ways each Type relates to the six core team issues (communication, culture, leadership, change, conflict resolution, and stress); and practice ways to make their multi-type teams function more effectively. This workshop is held over 2 days for a total of 15 hours and can accommodate 6 to 24 participants.
Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to discuss effective team dynamics; explore 360 team feedback on the seven critical competencies for emotionally effective teamwork using the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey 2.0 (TESI 2.0); and practice ways to make their teams function more effectively through stress management, conflict resolution, communication enhancement, and beyond! This workshop is held over 2 days for a total of 15 hours and can accommodate 6 to 24 participants.
Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to discuss effective team dynamics; explore Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and practice ways to make their teams function more effectively. This workshop is held over 2 days for a total of 16 hours and can accommodate 6 to 12 participants.
Taking time to connect as a team is an often-overlooked element of success. These occasions can be organized for workgroups, clubs, networks - any group wishing to build a greater sense of community and purpose. At a carefully planned retreat, groups have the opportunity to reconnect, celebrate successes, plan for the future, and build powerful relationships with one another. Onsite at your home base or away in a stress-free environment, investing in your success will leave your team energized, motivated, and refreshed.