How many of you get up in the morning and ask yourselves ‘Am I physically fit to run my life?’ I am sure not many. We are so involved in our mundane work that it just slips our mind to focus on our own health. Health and wellness are becoming very serious issues all around the world. With so much competitiveness in the business sphere, our work involves a lot of stress which affects our health.
The workload and job stress make us prone to a lot of health-related problems, such as heart disease and mental illness. When you are working in a corporate environment, with less physical activities, it becomes very important for us to take care of our body. There are many studies to prove that a healthy employee is a lot more productive at work too. It is very simple— when a person is physically fit and healthy, that positivity transcends and reflects in his work.
Understanding the importance of employee wellness and health, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a very cool initiative called ‘Global wellness challenge’ wherein the Company turns its office campus into a mini Olympics stadium. Several physical activities are organised for the employees, which are also competitive in nature with teams and individuals competing with each other to win.
The Company has tied with an external vendor to build a health and wellness platform to measure the progress of the employees. The number of activities an employee participates in or wins is reflected in the form of steps or points. The interesting part of the whole exercise is that the initiative comes under the Company’s rewards programme and all these activities are incentivised. On achieving a specified number of steps or targets, HPE gives special incentives to the employees. Though the percentage of incentives is not high, it provides enough encouragement to the people to participate with enthusiasm.
The annual event, which is based on a theme, revolved around the theme of ‘Iconic buildings’ this year.
The number of steps taken by the employees will take them forward through iconic buildings. This time, it started with the Opera House in Sydney and will go through the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan, the Patronas Twin Towers, the Taj Mahal and the Bank of Georgia building.
“The Global Wellness Challenge is a marque programme of HPE. We believe in creating a fit and healthy culture,” says Srinath Krishna, country manager, total rewards, India, HPE, who is heading the whole programme in India.
There are a lot of interesting and well-organised activities within the office campuses. One is a walkathon where employees can participate to walk in the campus for 5–10 kilometres. Another is a 60-second challenge where a person has to complete a task in 60 seconds. The tasks are related to physical activities, such as virtual cycling, where employees of different regions of the country can compete with each other.
The most interesting one is the foot pool challenge wherein two teams have to play football inside a pool. Other activities include a mini golf, staircase challenge and desktop Zumba.
Vantage Fit is a customisable employee health and wellness app with features for activity tracking, calorie intake, daily workout routine and many more, designed especially for corporate employees. The application also comes with a 12-week health program where each week it focuses on a different health aspect, encouraging a healthy lifestyle in the workplace.
Global wellness Challenge is a global campaign that has been running for a few years now. But for India, the company also has a localised campaign customised for employees in the country. So the Indian employees get to participate in both the campaigns.
The whole campaign culminates in a ‘Run’ wherein the family members, such as spouse and kids of the employees, can also participate. Participation in the ‘Run’ depends on the number of steps achieved by the employees, to make sure they have enough stamina.
All employees, even the senior leadership, can participate in the Global Wellness Challenge. The Company has about 18,000 employees in India, and on an average, around 30 – 40 per cent employees participate. This year, the GWC 2019 started on 9 March and HPE is aiming to increase the participation percentage to 60–80 per cent. GWC 2019 is a two-month long programme, which will end on 12 April, 2019.