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Looking to crank up your wellness culture? Learn from a top-ranking company

Hey FC Team!

Today’s interview is a little different from our recent ones. We were fortunate to have a few words with Sarah Miranda from Sun Coast Resources. They’ve participated in four Challenges so far and have placed 1st or 2nd place in their division each time! This definitely makes Sun Coast one of the most competitive teams that participates in our Challenges.

If your company enjoys its friendly rivalry and are the types who to go the events looking to win, there should be a few things you can learn from their training repertoire down below.

Enjoy!

How many years has Sun Coast Resources participated in the Challenge?

We’ve just completed our fourth year.

If I’m not mistaken, you’ve consistently been ranked near the top?

We’ve placed first or second place in our division every year.

Wow! So what does wellness look like at your company?

It keeps us busy all year. Our CEO is all about wellness programs. We do walks to raise money for charities. We have a 5k club that does four-to-six competitive runs. We also do step challenges internally at the headquarters, stress management month, and weekly yoga. And, of course, the Fit Company Challenge has been a cornerstone of our wellness program, keeping us active and training together all year round.

Does your company need to incentivize employees to participate in all this wellness?

Our company handles all the entrance fees and sponsors the runs, of course, but there hasn’t been the need for any big pushes. We’re fortunate that we’ve gotten to the place where people just do it because they want to.

How does your company prepare for the Challenge every year?

A couple of ways. We’ve got our on-site gym, our wellness programs, and trainers who come in. One thing in particular is that we created a whole training program that’s based off the Fit Company training packets. With those, we then do eight weeks of training prior to the challenge.

At the start of all our preparations, we also do a weigh-in, check BMI, things like that. After eight weeks, we do a second round of tests and we always see significant improvement in everyone’s bodies. I mean, when they get into it, they start pushing hard. It’s not just an “I need to get fit for a wedding” kind of push, but one where they know they want to compete.

I heard you guys have fun selecting your team captains. What’s your process?

We have a team captain “tryout” system in place, where we do a mock Fit Company Challenge with the equipment on hand. Whoever lands in the top six spots gets to become a captain. The captains then go through rounds of selection like a sports draft and build their teams from the pool of participants. Often, the captains are well-rounded athletes and they pick their teams based on everyone’s strengths, such as picking one person for endurance, one for speed, and so forth. By the end of the day, everyone will find themselves in a team for the Challenge, often with people they never worked with before.

No matter who makes it to the top, our team captains are also the kinds of people who really care about their squadmates. They’re the ones who push them to improve their health and up their fitness game.

Speaking of competitive, Sun Coast consistently scores in the top of its division each year. What’s that like?

Well, we’ve been really competitive since our first year. We started our wellness program four years ago, and three months in was the first time we did the challenge and its grown ever since. Now, we go to each event with the goal of pushing ourselves, and placing among the top teams. I mean, we’re just so competitive against each other even during training that it would be hard to go out there and not try to win our division.

What range of fitness levels are you working with at the office?

We’re a corporate headquarters filled with office workers, but about half our employees here at any time are drivers. A lot of people spend their days sitting down and often start with some back problems and flexibility we need to work through. We started out catering to the athletic and competitive types, but now we’ve expanded it, encouraging anyone who wants to compete to get in there and grow our participation.

Have you noticed any of the training habits continue after the event?

Absolutely! At most corporate gyms, you’ll see people hit the elliptical and then get back to work, but we’re seeing people using kettlebells, tension bands and other stuff we picked up from the event.

Has the culture at your company shifted as well?

For sure. It’s easy to be unhealthy in Houston (chuckles), the cards are stacked against us! But in just this last year, we’ve seen a really big culture change at Sun Coast. It’s become cool to be healthier, to go to the gym on a lunch break. I’ve seen that people are buying healthier food, eating more fruits, and enjoying high protein meals. The whole culture has shifted at the office.

Has the Challenge impacted team spirit?

Absolutely. I spend most of my time in my office in our gym, and I’m constantly hearing people from different departments talk about the Challenge after they signed up. They’re like “oh you’re so and so from such and such department. Nice to meet you!” It’s people who wouldn’t normally interact with each other who are now suddenly meeting outside of work, recognizing each other in the gym, and so forth. And this wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t all working towards the same goals.

What do you do to keep the momentum going before the event?

We send out weekly email updates, mention how the training is going, point out new healthy options at the cafeteria, that sort of thing. We also provide new workouts each week, one that’s strength-based and one about endurance. We encourage our participants to do each workout twice.

What does Sun Coast do to celebrate after the event?

We make a special announcement to the whole company. We point out which teams came in what place, as well as our company’s overall placement. We also take tons of photos during the event and share those with everyone.

Any final thoughts or comments?

We literally talk about the Fit Company Challenge year-round. It’s significantly changed the lives of some of our people. They set goals, make health targets for their next year, contribute to these events, see changes in their own bodies.

Special thanks again goes to Sarah for having taken the time to talk with us about their company and participation! It’s great to hear from teams that really go all out for wellness and enjoy the friendly competition.

We’ll be in Austin at the end of the month, and then over in Dallas then San Antonio in early May. Looking forward to catching up with everyone on the field!

Yours in wellness,

The FC Squad

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Pitfalls and prizes of company wellness programs: Four Takeaways from Superstore’s “step challenge”

Planning and implementing wellness initiatives for your company can initially seem like a lot of work. There’s recruitment for the event, logistics to work out, people to get motivated, and a whole lot of monitoring along the way.

If you’re finding yourself at the initial planning stages for a wellness challenge and it’s feeling more daunting than you realized: sit back, breath and don’t worry. Countless other program leaders like yourself have been in the same place before you and now have incredible success stories.

With that in mind, one of the best starting places is to look at other wellness programs and learn from them. Seeing how their programs were ran, you’ll be able to recognize which routes lead to success and which pitfalls you’ll want to avoid along the way.

To kick-start our discussion, we’d like to turn to a recent episode of NBC’s Superstore that involved a company-wide wellness “step challenge”.

For those of you not familiar with the show, Superstore is a situational comedy set inside a fictional big-box department store. The store is not exactly presented as an ideal work environment, and as a result, most of the employees have become apathetic and unmotivated.

In season 4, episode 11, a good idea is introduced – one that looks like it might boost team spirit around the store. Glenn, the store manager, signed their location up for a one-week, company-wide step challenge. According to the rules of the challenge, each store would be working together, their combined steps going into a live tally. At the end of the week, the winning store would receive the awesome prize of… having lunch with one of the company executives.

Well, the incentive (lunch with a company exec) turned out to be not quite the best motivation to get employees moving. No one really cared about the prize and to make matters worse, Glenn, who promised he would lead by example, suffers an injury while announcing the challenge and is unable to help the team gain steps.

Just when the challenge seemed dead in the water, Amy and Dina, a pair of career-oriented employees took it upon themselves to get the store moving. The common ground they used to incentivize their team? Orchestrate a rivalry with another store.

The incentive worked in rallying their team, but the results were disastrous. Like most situational comedies, the events in the episode spiraled hilariously out of control. Employees got too competitive and tribal and the episode ended with both stores being vandalized and ransacked. Not exactly what one would call a resounding success.

Ultimately, the step challenge, while a good idea in theory, turned out to be somewhat of a disaster in practice. While they did manage to get their employees to bond together, it was for the wrong reasons and with worse results.

So why are we bringing this up this episode in our discussion today? Well, for starters, any show or movie talking about wellness always perks our interest (surprise! it’s what we do). But on a more serious note, it’s interesting how the writers of this episode clearly know a few things about company wellness programs, as well as the right ways to flip them upside down and make them comical for the viewers.

Obviously, we don’t endorse ransacking anyone’s office as the end result of any program (who would!?), but there’s a few takeaways here for companies running or looking to run their own wellness programs, whether they be step challenges or any other events.

  1. First up, make your event team-focused. Step challenges are often solitary endeavours that involve competing against yourself or other pre-set goals. Having a challenge where the entire team works together towards a common goal goal is an awesome way to get people talking and working together.

Ask yourself if your current direction will lead to employees going in the same direction, or each branching off pursuing their own goals. Any event that puts the emphasis on the team first should ideally be your first pick.

  1. Second, go easy on the rivalry. On the surface, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a little interoffice or inter-company rivalry. Some people are naturally competitive and enjoy matching up their results against those of their peers. However, any time rivalry is in play, the main takeaway is to keep it friendly. If your company is working against another, put an emphasis on having fun and good sportsmanship. This should help curb any negative behavior. Who knows, maybe they’ll meet again at the next year’s event and remember that initial meeting.
  1. Third, focus on the motivation BEFORE organizing the event. The main issue the store was tackling in the show was a lack of motivation – which didn’t exactly improve even after they launched the challenge. The employees didn’t feel like a team and the weak incentive wasn’t the kind of prize to get them moving forward of their own volition.

Now, that’s not to say a company lunch with an executive is a bad prize for participants – only that it wasn’t a good idea for THIS group. Every team is different, and it’s key to understanding what motivates, pushes and gets them moving before putting together the event.

In cases where employee morale is low, a strong incentive might be needed to get people involved. Where in others, when everyone already likes working together, you might only need a little push to get them involved. Once you know what drives them, you simply need to pitch it to your team.

  1. Fourth, work with multiple leaders and leadership styles. As the show revealed, having a single figure at the head of a challenge can go downhill if that person has to back out or if their leadership doesn’t get people moving.

It’s worth bearing in mind, that different people respond better to different kinds of leadership. If you have super competitive, athletic types in your team, they will likely benefit the most from a leader who is equally competitive and ready to push them. On the other hand, for the employees that like to bond and have a good time, they might only need someone who is fun, energetic and knows how to lift up the team spirit.

A final important takeaway is that there is rarely a one-size-fits all model for every team and every wellness event and challenge. Every team is different, and even the same type of wellness event might need to be tweaked just a little bit to fit your office.

In conclusion, it’s interesting that even sitcoms sometimes have insightful things to say about wellness programs. If you’ve been part of a step challenge or have one coming up, we recommend you can catch that episode from Superstore. It’s definitely not what you want a wellness program to become, but there’s enough in there that anyone who’s participated in one should be able to get a kick out of it. Sometimes it’s good to sit back and laugh a little, even if it’s about the same kinds of projects we’re working on.

Yours in Wellness,
The FC Squad

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Interview with Buffini: Become “One Big Company” through wellness

Welcome back to Squad Talk!

We’re off to the start of a great event season! We had an awesome first event in Houston and our next one is in coming up fast in San Diego this Saturday. To everyone getting ready for the San Diego Challenge, we wish you great times with your team!

To help get you motivated, we’ve got another quick interview ready for you today. It’s with Bonnie Nuciforo from Buffini & Company. They’re a company that really prizes wellness and we love that the Fit Company Challenge is now part of their wellness programs and company culture.

Enjoy!

How many times has Buffini & Co. been to the Fit Company Challenge?

This is our third year!

Are the same people returning this year or is it mostly new faces?

This year, our group looks to be about a 50/50 split of returning participants and new faces.

What sort of participants signed up for the event?

Our participants are from all across the spectrum as far as fitness is concerned. We’ve got the advanced ones who know where they stand and then those who more or less signed up because everyone else was getting out there. But even then, because these are not exercises you do every day, there’s something for everyone to brush up on before the event.

How do you get people out there and make sure it doesn’t sound intimidating?

We participated the last two years and it has always been really well received. So past participants told co-workers how amazing it was and reassured them that it’s friendly for all levels. This isn’t an event that’s going to knock you out, just push you. It’s a fitness event, sure, but it’s all about getting people together, getting people outside, and then having fun. The fun part really makes the difference.

Have you noticed any benefits so far at Buffini & Company?

Events like this help propagate a good team culture, a sense of “we’re all in this together.” It’s easy to sit at your desk and never talk to someone from across the building or in another building, but bringing them out to events reminds everyone that we’re all one big company and one big team.

What are you guys doing to get ready for this coming event?

Well, I have my background as a bootcamp trainer, so getting people organized is second nature. We set up two weekly workouts. Wednesdays after work, the participants get together for a one-hour bodyweight workout, and then on Saturdays I bring out my equipment – kettlebells and bands for a different style of training that not everyone gets on a daily basis.

What other sort of wellness initiatives are taking place at Buffini & Company?

Most of us want to be healthy individuals and the company offers a lot of extra incentives to get enrolled in health challenges, tutorials, lessons and so forth. We have a company “beBetter” wellness program that we can update and check regularly. We also earn what we call “Buffini Bucks” anytime we participate in something that improves our wellbeing. At the end of the year, all of us get together and we spend all our bucks at an auction for things like TVs, coffee makers, etc. It’s a real blast and it often pushes us to make more the following year by getting into new health and wellness programs.

Any final thoughts about the road leading to the event?

It’s been pretty cool to see people who work together now working out together. We don’t always get to talk to people from other departments, but getting out there and being able to work out together really creates a bond. Our team workout sessions are not the same as going to the gym with the regular buddies. It’s a different atmosphere that you wouldn’t normally get to experience.

Thanks again to Bonnie for having taken the time to talk to us and share all the awesome programs Buffini & Company are doing for wellness. We know they’re busy getting ready for the event this weekend and can’t wait to catch up with them in person.

Hope to catch you on the field soon!

The Fit Company Squad

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Interview with JLL: Bringing Colleagues Together, One Challenge at a Time

Welcome back to Squad Talk!

We hope the winter blues hasn’t been getting to you … February can be cold but nothing a few push-ups or plank holds can’t warm up!

To bring some warmth to things, today we’re bringing you another quick interview. It’s with Adam Moret, Sr. Well-being Specialist and Brian Sutton, Associate Director over at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL). Their Chicago office has participated in the Fit Company Challenge a couple years running, and they recently spoke with us about how their company gets people engaged with wellness events and how the Fit Company Challenge fit within their existing culture and wellness goals. In 2018 JLL won Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles, so they know a thing or two about Wellness and employee engagement!

What do the health and wellness initiatives look like at JLL?

Adam: A lot of companies put a ton of money into giving everyone across the company the same wellness benefits. For instance, subsidizing gym memberships, or giving everyone free headspace apps, but often they don’t have that much engagement – and certainly not at the local level. JLL does a mix of both. We have national programs that are company wide, such as programs with Fitbits and that sort of thing, but we also give local offices opportunities to tailor events that really fit their culture. After all, they know the employees best and every office has their own unique culture.

I heard you have something called “Health champions.” What’s that about?

Adam: The Health Champions are local wellness leaders at our offices. They’re typically the ones who take the lead on local initiatives and get people motivated for big events. They’re the kind of people who can talk to everyone and act as these beacons to get their colleagues interested in events and wellness programs.

How do you select your local Health Champions?

Adam: It’s all volunteer. Often it’s either a local team leader who can motivate people and help encourage others to get involved. Other times we’ve noticed our Champions are simply someone who knows everyone in the office such as our receptionists. They know everyone by first name and have ways of putting things on people’s desks encouraging them to participate.

How did the Fit Company Challenge fit in the Chicago office ecosystem with your Health Champions?

Brian: On one level it appealed to our employees who love competition, the kind who love nothing more than going out and pushing themselves to the next level. But for others, the main appeal was that it was a fun thing, that it brought people together who maybe weren’t connected before.

The suitable for all fitness levels part was great and a major point our Health Champions got across to people. It signaled that this wasn’t reserved for people who have completed an Ironman. It’s an event for anyone who wants to come out and have fun.

Ultimately, we wanted to build a culture where people get to grow, where they can meet up and work with folks they haven’t worked with before, and this event fit perfectly.

How were you able to get people engaged and excited about the event?

Brian: One thing that really worked for myself and our Health Champions was the personal touch. Getting up and talking to someone makes all the difference. It’s easy to ignore an email, but when a colleague walks up and says it will be a lot of fun and then after we’ll be able to share stories about it, that’s a lot more engaging. Once we had one or two people in, it really caught on by word of mouth – even after the fact. A lot of people came up and were like, “I’m interested and I want to know if you do this again.”

Any last minute takeaways?

Brian: Everyone who did the event, loved it. It was a great opportunity, bringing together wellness, fitness, mental wellness, and a great sense of belonging within JLL.

Thanks again to Adam and Brian for taking the time to chat with us about all the amazing wellness initiatives they have at JLL!

Talk to you soon,

The Fit Company Squad

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Interview with Alliance Abroad

Welcome back to Squad Talk, the Official Fit Company newsletter!

We’ve got another great interview to share with you today. It’s with Leslie Tate and Joell Beagle at Alliance Abroad. Alliance Abroad is a mid-sized company that’s been coming out to the Fit Company Challenge for several years and Leslie and Joell are associates who have lead the way in bringing out awesome teams every year.

How many times has Alliance Abroad participated in the Challenge?

Leslie: We’ve participated in three Challenges so far. Each time, our participation has grown. At first, when it was new, only a few people got involved, but once people started going – and even if it was just to watch and cheer – our employees took notice. They got to see how simple and accessible it was, and then the numbers, along with the desire to work out both before and after the event, really went up.

What kind of participation do you usually get for the events? Is it mostly new people or the same ones returning?

Leslie: We see a definite a mix of past and new participants as our company grows more people join in.

Joell: We work as a visa sponsor here in the USA for bringing people over for a cultural exchange program. At the last challenge, we had several trainees in the office, we got three of our Korean and Brazilian exchange participants to join the event! It just goes to show that going in and being active together kinda crosses a lot of cultural lines.

That’s great! Does your company have an easy time making teams and putting people together for the event?

Leslie: When we make our teams, everyone likes to get really involved. We’ve got a higher level group that’s very serious about this.

Joell: They go to the gym together after the office for cardio and weight lifting. One of them is even a trainer. They try to ramp it up each year and train for higher targets than the year before.

Leslie: Of course, we tell everyone, that you can be as aggressive towards your goals as you want. After all, one thing we loved about the challenge is how it doesn’t encourage judgement between people who want to take it seriously and those of us who just show up to have fun. On event day, we end up all cheering for each other.

Joell: Overall, there’s different reasons why groups came together – some were friends outside work and said “why not” while others were natural athletes and really competitive and just gravitate towards each other. Things work great for the intense teams as much as those who show up because it’s fun and feels safe being active with other members of the team.

Did either of you find yourselves setting goals or fitness targets you wanted to reach this year?

Leslie: We’re a very diverse group in terms of age, demographics and fitness levels. A lot of people set personal goals for the different challenges. For instance, I wanted to run during the entire Overtime course, and I did it this year.

Joell: You also find that you have secret goals that you didn’t set but you surprise yourself and are like “Yes, that’s what I wanted to accomplish.” It could be holding a plank the entire time, or other little goals that matters in the moment when you achieve them.

What are some of the things you do around the office to get people fit and ready for the challenge?

Leslie: We do things like “office planks” a couple times a day. We give warnings, like “okay, in 3 minutes, we’re gonna plank!” and anyone who wants to join comes down to one side of the office and we plank for about a minute or two. Once it’s done, they go back to work and maybe they’ll join the next one in a couple of hours.

A couple times a day? That’s great! Any suggestions for other offices that might want to start something like this?

Leslie: Well, we figured out very quickly, that planking right around lunch is the worst time!

To wrap things up, have you noticed any changes in your workplace culture?

Leslie: I can honestly say there’s a lot more chatter around the office now about being active. We still enjoy our treats and snacks at birthdays, but we’ve also got our own soccer league, bowling league, and the participation in those has grown too as our company as a whole gets more interested in fitness and team work.

Events like this help us to get to know each other. People you might have only been acquainted with before could suddenly become your closest friend as your train and participate together.

In the months after each event, there are still people that stick together and keep working out as a team. They found workout buddies who they can better themselves with because they still feel that sense of teamwork they had during the challenge.

                         

                         

 

A huge thanks again to Leslie & Joell for holding the interview with us and sharing their experiences with the Fit Company Challenge!

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