Corporate Wellness to us, as with health, has many different components to it. Of course, our bread and butter is fitness and training. However, so much goes on behind the scenes to keep the companies we work for fit, healthy, happy and building great relationships. So we wanted to share just what it is that we do behind the scenes.
First of all, our corporate wellness programs wouldn’t be successful without the amazing companies we work with. They all show an incredible dedication to their staff’s wellbeing, and their staff show a great appreciation to their companies for going above and beyond. You may have seen some videos of our corporate teams discussing the program, and so many of them speak of their pride for the company they work for. This stands out as probably the most prominent difference in the teams that we are lucky enough to work with.
There is no one-size-fits-all for our corporate wellness offering. Every company is different, and we appreciate that. So, throughout this blog we are going to go through some areas of our programs that we do behind the scenes. As with health and fitness, the training sessions are just the tip of the iceberg.
We have all different types of training environments with our teams, it is all about making the best of each situation. All of the participants are hugely varied in terms of age and training experience, so the environment and sessions need to be well planned and executed. We have one company that transform their meeting room into a gym and others that use local community halls and we supply them with equipment to use. We have other companies that we have designed and implemented corporate gyms for. They are fortunate to have designated spaces and we utilised that to create the best gyms we could with the best use of space. But one thing is a constant no matter what environment our teams are in; a well-structured and safe but challenging session is always had.
An example of one of the bespoke gym areas we designed for our clients.
TRAINING PROGRAMS
Whether the staff have a gym membership or not, we have them covered. Our very own GWD app has everything they need to stay fit at home or at the gym, for both beginners and experienced exercisers. With different programs designed for the gym and with no equipment, it’s a great way to complement our training sessions so they can train as often as they like.
The training programs have exercise demonstrations for every movement prescribed. It also includes guidance on the amount of sets and repetitions to perform, and how much rest to take in between sets.
NUTRITION GUIDANCE
Nutrition, the absolute minefield of losing weight and being healthy, right? Well it doesn’t have to be. We try to make our nutrition guidance as clear and simple as possible for staff. This is first of all to help them understand what “healthy eating” actually is, then give them advice and guidance on how to implement that into day to day life. Nutrition is your bodies fuel and is therefore so vital to how much energy you have throughout the day. We want our companies firing on all cylinders during their working day as much as they do!
Nutrition workshops are also provided to give that extra bit of information out to staff. We have found this a great way to deliver the information, as the staff can sit down and really digest (excuse the nutrition pun) what they are being taught.
Our GWD app also synchronises with the popular calorie tracking app “MyFitnessPal”. This enables staff to input their daily calorie intake, and we then see that information within our app.
ACTIVITY TRACKING – FITBIT & MYZONE
Never has technology been more prominent in health & fitness, and rightly so. Wearable tech is leading the way, and we like to use 2 main pieces of equipment; FitBit and MyZone.
As you will probably know, the FitBit is worn around the wrist and it tracks daily activity, the main one being numbers of steps performed throughout the day. This allows us to keep track of staff’s daily activity and produce reports like the one showed above. We can create groups (such as departments or branches) or view individually to see who is performing the best. This creates a fun, engaging atmosphere with the added spice of a little friendly competition!
The MyZone heart rate monitor is worn as a strap around the sternum and is worn during exercise. This tracks data such as heart rate, calories burned, and what percentage of maximum heart rate the user is working at. Again, we receive data such as the above snapshot to evaluate both how often staff are training and how hard they are working in each session.
This again creates a fun and competitive environment. We also promote teamwork by often giving teams targets to reach collectively and push towards as either a company or a team. The MyZone app also has a social media element to it. Users can view each other’s workouts and comment on them. They can also view the challenges we have created for them and see a live leader board of where they stand.
GWD APP & MEMBER ACCESS SITE
This is where all of the above information comes together. Our very own GWD app allows access to training programs, nutrition information, coaching videos, progress tracking, everything we feel the staff need. The member site gives access to content on living a healthier lifestyle, live home workouts, guides to food, how to improve mindset (more of which we will come onto soon). Again, everything we feel is vital to improve the general health, fitness and mind of staff is on there.
KEEPING IN CONTACT
Aside from seeing the teams during training sessions, we keep in contact regularly with them. We set up whatsapp groups for each company (or by department if the staff numbers are high) to encourage engagement with each other and keep them up to date with sessions and what’s going on. What we do always has been and always will be about being inclusive and improving team cohesion.
We send out regular emails to the teams to update them on their activity levels and how our challenges are going. We also send out any information we feel may help them in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. With so much information being thrown around social media and search engines, it’s important that we sift through that for the staff to make sure they are only getting the correct information to help them.
MINDSET WORKSHOPS
Our Mindset Academy is something we set up at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown. At GWD Performance, we consider our mindset to be one of the three main pillars of health and wellbeing, along with fitness/training and nutrition. We felt it was a perfect time to introduce this as a positive mindset suddenly became even more important. But even at the best of times, how we approach health, fitness, life and our careers has the most significant role to play in our success.
In our mindset academy we cover modules such as goal setting, making and breaking habits, self-belief, willpower and motivation. Staff have the option to watch the workshops live so they can be interactive and ask questions, or they can watch the workshop back in their own time. Participants receive a workbook to go through in order to continually work on improving mindset, because our academy is so much more than just a lecture.
LOCKDOWN – HOW WE HAVE ADAPTED OUR SERVICE
As with most businesses, the current lockdown has meant we have had to adapt our program and service. We felt it was our duty to continue to provide quality to all staff. But we also felt we had to improve certain aspects. With a large chunk of staff working from home or furloughed during this time, the community aspect all of a sudden became more important. It has been great to see staff seeing each other over our zoom training sessions, this point of contact and continuation of doing something together has been priceless in maintain relationships between staff.
As mentioned earlier, this also prompted us to launch our very own mindset academy to develop our holistic approach to health and wellness. Development of the psychological aspect of health can help no end with the physiological aspect, they go hand-in-hand. You know the saying, healthy body, healthy mind. But an improved mindset isn’t just going to help our health, but also our career and personal lives too. What we teach in the academy can be implemented in almost any scenario in order to improve the outcome, which can only be positive for business performance.
Of course, our training sessions also became “virtual”. We use Zoom to deliver our online sessions to staff, they have access to over 20 workouts per week to choose from, to do with not one, but two of our coaches. This enables us to keep a close eye on the staff during the session to ensure they are performing each movement correctly and safely. It also gives us the opportunity to be more interactive with everyone, and one of the coaches can concentrate on the most important things like being the DJ and providing the tunes!
We also took the decision to integrate our corporate wellness clients into the same facebook group and member site as our gym clients. This was again to improve the community element of our service and allow staff to be connected with similarly likeminded individuals. This also gave staff the opportunity to have access to more material and help on their wellness journey, which we feel has really paid dividends.
We are so proud of all of the companies we work with and feel privileged to be working alongside employers that really care about their staff. If you feel that your company or the company you work for would benefit from working with us, we would love to have a chat and show you the ways in which we can help.
