You may have heard of Shawn Achor’s ripple effect. In his book “The Happiness Advantage” he writes how, when you pick up one good habit it can ripple into other areas of life.

At Fitlink we think downloading one simple piece of tech, and using it over the long-term, can cause the ripple effect. Wellness equals success in work and in life; not just for an individual but on a global scale.

Real Data

Fitlink has its own app and dashboard so you can truly monitor your wellness activities without having to guess. Sustained behaviour change is really the focus, and without clever tech you can’t track your progress. The mind easily forgets, but when your activities are stored they can be used. You’ll have a reliable method that helps you keep going on your fitness journey.

Motivation

You’ll be motivated because you’ll be accountable. We’ve seen how apps like Strava and Runkeeper have changed the way people exercise. We’ve got to the point when we say if it’s not on Strava, did it even happen? It’s frustrating when one of your friends is on one app but you’re on another. The cool thing about the Fitlink app is that it connects them all together, so you can see what all your friends are doing, in the same place, at the same time. Most of all, if you’re able to share your activity with all friends, you’ll have more fun.

Purpose

Humans are social animals and we want to feel like we matter. Belonging to a tribe of athletes, friends and employees can really give you a boost. At work you can create a culture of wellness; one that believes that prevention is better than cure.

Your mental and physical wellbeing will ripple into other aspects of your life. As Achor puts it; “ When it comes to the pursuit of success and happiness, most people assume the same formula: if you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you’ll be happy.”

But it’s the other way around. If you’re happy, you’re more likely to succeed.

That is why Fitlink exists. If you’re happy, fit and well, your quality of life will go up and so will your quantity of work.

www.fitlinkbusiness.com

This year the World Health Organisation defined burn-out as a syndrome caused by workplace stress; it’s more vital than ever to make sure that you and your employees are well. Wellness equals productivity, you can’t have one without the other, and Fitlink promotes a healthy workplace that makes people want to be there. These Wellness Challenges can be used alongside Fitlink’s clever tools and are a great way to keep your best talent thriving.

1. Cycle to Work

Set weekly and monthly challenges. Your employees will compete to reach a certain distance/number of days. Use your Fitlink branded website with content that you can edit and manage to set challenges. Who can ride the most in a month? Who has the most consecutive days? Track and reward those who give it a go. It’s a great way to increase employee engagement, setting them up for the day as well as providing a low-stress activity for the commute home.

2. Lunch Walking

Employees try to walk their way to the top of the leaderboard during lunch hour. Employees who engage in physical activity during breaks are far more productive than those who stay sedentary. They’ll be able track each other with the Fitlink App while you monitor their progress.

3. Try Something New

To keep it fresh and exciting, how many new activities can employees join? It has been proven that people are more likely to stick with exercise if they participate in more than one sport. Employees can track activity with the Fitlink app which shares multiple activities from all leading activity trackers. One might do yoga, while another swims, while another meditates. Whatever they choose, as long as they give it a try, progress will be tracked, shared and rewarded.

4. Gratitude Challenge.

Employees can use a gratitude app, which can be shared to Fitlink if they choose, at the beginning or at the end of the workday. Writing out 3 things to be grateful for has been scientifically proven to improve positivity and overall happiness. They can share with a colleague or keep it private.

5. Train for an Event.

From a 5k to an Ultra Race, fitness is more fun with friends. Fitlink’s App connects all fitness platforms so they can share and track their activities. Employees will be motivated as they train and compete together to set goals and earn rewards. It doesn’t just have to be running, all exercise counts.

Changed behavior changes lives. These challenges can be included into the workday and are a great way to get well, set goals and see real results. Habits form if they are added to the daily routine.

Fitlink promotes health and fitness, so people form new habits and take less sick days. It’s an easy to use, customised tool that saves time and pointless admin. Try a FREE demo here:https://fitlinkbusiness.com

I would like to take a few minutes to introduce you to a solution to one of the biggest problems affecting modern corporate business today.

A problem likely to be costing your business hundreds of thousands of pounds every year and one that most likely has a significant impact on your productivity.

What am I referring to?

Employee health and wellbeing and how it impacts your business.

Ok, so right now you may be thinking something along the lines of…

“Oh, employee health and wellbeing, we’ve got this under control”

“Our employees are Ok, and are a pretty fit and healthy bunch”

…but please, stay with me as I think you are going to be surprised by a lot of the following information.

A recent survey by the Office of Statistics found that an estimated 137.3 million working days are lost each year in the UK due to sickness or injury, which is equivalent to 4.3 days per worker!

Of these…

• 34 million days are lost through minor illnesses — such as coughs and colds
• 30 million days lost through musculoskeletal problems — including back pain, neck and upper limb problems
• 15.8 million days lost through mental health issues — including stress, depression and anxiety

Interestingly, sickness absentee rates are much higher in organisations with more than 500 employees and higher among part-time workers.

A large percentage of this absenteeism could be prevented by a more healthy lifestyle.

Did you know?

• In England and Wales, 59% of adults are overweight, of whom 23% are obese
• In Scotland, 64% of adults are overweight, of whom 27% are obese
• Physical inactivity costs the UK £20bn each year and is a serious blight on the modern workforce

And these individuals make up a large percentage of your workforce!

Let me ask you a question

If we are to accept that a Company is a collection of individuals and is therefore only as good as the people who form that Company, and bearing in mind the statistics I have just shown you, how strong is your Company?

I’ve asked this same question many times while consulting and I’m always amused by the different answers I receive.

Directors and senior managers are usually quite bullish and feel that the workforce is in good shape and there are no serious problems.

But!

When I speak with the general workforce I usually get very different feedback as there is often an apathy and lack of enthusiasm for initiatives.

They feel that initiatives have been forced on them and so only pay lip service to the program and continue as before with no real progress which results in many initiatives being only mildly successful.

So, if you don’t have a health and wellness plan or the one that you have is not as effective as it should be, how much money are you wasting every year because of inactive and unfit employees?

And of course, it’s not all about money lost through absenteeism, is it?

Unhealthy and unfit employees often demonstrate lethargy and apathy.

They are either not around or they can present a negative image to your customers and clients.

A workforce with a bad ‘Attitude’ can cost your Company millions in lost revenue and give your business a negative image.

So what’s the solution?

There are of course any number of wellness initiatives available, however, from my experience, most of them fail in the long term for various reasons.

• They are difficult to implement
• They don’t get employee buy-in
• They are hugely difficult to manage
• Success can’t be measured
• They are not really fun for the workforce
• There is no competitive element
• They often sit in isolation and soon fall down because of lack of engagement and success

However, there is a solution, an effective solution that could save your business hundreds of thousands of pounds each year.

A solution that could increase your productivity by over 25%.

One that helps build a positive, healthy and invigorated workforce that reflects the attitude and service provided to your customers and clients.

It’s easy to implement, manage and measure and is offered with as much ongoing support as you need to create a meaningful and effective health and wellness plan for your business.

A solution that could position your business as a leading UK employer.

Wellness Works. For People. For Business - Fitlink for Business

What are you waiting for? 👆

1. Create a Wellbeing Calendar and give each month a wellness theme. You could piggyback national campaigns or key events to help you decide what theme a particular month could be. For example, World Meditation Day is on Wednesday 15th May 2019 so May could be Mindfulness May with the focus on meditation, breathing and mindfulness. This will give you an overall plan to work towards where events, talks, promos, guides, blog posts, social media and newsletters have a theme to follow.

2. Create an Active Travel campaign to encourage staff to walk, run or cycle to work. If employees live within a few miles of work then they could walk in. If they live within 5 to 10 miles then they could cycle in. Staff getting public transport could get off a stop or two earlier and walk the last part of their commute. You can set up a cycle to work scheme to help employees buy a new discounted bike. Anyone that chooses active travel option should be rewarded.

3. Encourage Walking Meetings so instead of booking a meeting room and sitting down, take the meeting outside and walk and talk. Public Health England (PHE) is urging office staff to conduct meetings on the hoof. Walking meetings are now being prescribed by PHE as a potential cure to chronic sedentarism in the workplace.

4. Keeping Active and Moving is really important as sedentary office workers spend far too long in a stationary position. Encourage employees to use the stairs and not the lift. Provide nearby gym or health club vouchers to encourage employees to use them. Simple changes to routine habits will stack up over time.

5. Healthy Foods should be encouraged and supplied. Fruit and veg bowls should be available for staff to snack on. Information and guides on how to cook and eat healthily should be freely available off and online. Monthly cooking demos and group lunches where employees can prep and cook healthy meals together is fun and a great way to learn.

6. Staying Hydrated is so important to help with energy and concentration levels. Plus if employees are increasing their activity then increasing their water intake is a must too. Providing free refillable water bottles and ensuring there is plenty of water stations to refill is key. We should be drinking between 2.5 and 3.7 litres of water a day depending on the individual.

7. Stretching and Breathing to keep focussed, energised and relaxed can help balance out a busy day. Ensure employees are taking regular screen breaks, getting up from their desks and workstations to stretch out, walk around and to take some deep breathes. Standup desks are a perfect way to break up the standing/sitting positions. Doing too much of one is not good so changing it up with a mixture of positions will help.

8. Encourage employees to get some Head Space as busy lives mean our brains never switch off. Heads are full of thoughts and worries which over time can wear us down. Taking some time out to give our heads a break, to relax and slow or even stop the thoughts will help switch off from the worries and stresses. Guided meditation through mobile apps is a great way to get started so educating staff on tools and techniques available to help them is important.

9. Events, away days and Wellness Days for employees to get together, outside of work, to focus on themselves and their health will create a sense of community connected to their well-being. Fun activities like tough mudders, cycling events, yoga retreats, meditation classes, group PT sessions, hiking and walking are all fitness-focused activities for people to do as a group.

10. Talking and having someone to talk to. Make sure managers and key people are trained to spot the patterns that someone isn’t ok. Make sure employees are safe in the knowledge that there are people to talk to. Ask the question “how are you?” and encourage employees to be open about how they feel, good or bad. Share wellness tips, healthy things to do and places to go and be active. Make a point of ensuring the culture is open, caring and supportive of everyone around you. Keep talking.

Create a fit, healthy and happy culture

These workplace wellness tips are all great ways to start creating a fit, healthy and happy company culture. All or some of the above will form your workplace wellness strategy that aligns with your vision of creating a healthy workplace.

Getting the message out there, communicating the message, making sure employees can easily access content, resource and tools to help them, to help themselves so so important. Just sending a company email stating the obvious that “being healthy is important — now go do it” just isn’t going to work. By nature, humans are lazy so need encouragement and ultimately a nudge in the right direction to make sure a new healthy habit is formed.

At Fitlink for Business, we follow a simple habit loop methodology whereby we encourage an employee to do something active and healthy and then reward them for doing it. Simple. And after a while, the new healthy habit is formed. It can take 21 days to form a habit and after 66 days it becomes part of your lifestyle.

We supply businesses with a powerful technology solution to help employees create new healthy habits. By rewarding employees for being active, by encouraging healthy competition and helping employees discover activities and things to do, we have created an effective set of tools that support businesses of all sizes to run a successful workplace wellness strategy.

If you want to give your workplace wellness and boast then you need Fitlink for Business to help you. Within a few weeks, we can have your employees well on their way to becoming a fit, healthy and happy.

Get in touch to learn more.

You can now get cashback on your rewards with Fit Link.

We have partnered with a selection of top health and fitness brands to add even more value to the rewards you earn with Fit Link.

Every time you unlock and claim a reward, you will now also earn cashback. Most of our rewards involve significant discounts on purchases so now when you redeem using a discount code we will send you a percentage of the sale as cashback.

Rewards have different discount and cashback amounts so now not only are the savings significant, but you will also earn cashback on them too!

Check out the app for details of the reward and how much cashback you will earn.

Cashback can go up to 10% on some rewards, so there’s no better time to get active, to get rewarded and earning!

At Fit Link, we are committed to making sure you get rewarded as much as possible for all those activities you track so this seems like the perfect way to reward you even more.

Join Fit Link for free and start earning your cashback today!

• Convert your fitness & wellbeing data into points to unlock rewards
• Fit Link App on the App Store

Visit the Fit Link website here

Download the app here.

Keeping staff happy with perks is a quick fix to a more significant problem.

It’s true that staff are demotivated, unproductive and disengaged at work and that perks will help to change that but like any quick fix, the problem will come back.

Whats needed is a longer-term strategy to create a healthy company culture.

Management needs to change their mindset and understanding of how a modern workplace should work. Staff are wanting more from their employer, and a perk with no meaning just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The modern workforce is evolving, and there are different needs and wants which has a knock on effect to HR where the pressure of accommodating this increases.

Creating a healthy company culture is prevention and keeps the modern workforce fit, healthy and happy.

Investing time and money into a solution which looks after the wellbeing of your staff is crucial in today’s world.

Get this right, and your staff will feel motivated, productive and engaged.

Staff will feel valued that you’re investing in their wellbeing.

Staff will feel secure that you care more about them than just their output.

Staff will feel more connected to the company and its culture.

But best of all, there won’t be a need to send a perk, as being at work is rewarding enough.

Get in contact today so we can help you create that healthy and rewarding company culture that your staff will love.

Employee and workplace wellness solution by Fit Link for Business