Keeping it fresh

The showers are running constantly, the stairwells busy and the bike racks full for the first time in a decade. Brilliant, but the test will be whether these new habits continue long after the team challenge finishes. To make sure they do, keep your programme fresh. Add new or tougher fitness challenges, rotate and update healthy food choices, ask for feedback and act on it.

Hand balancing a lightbulb.

Five ideas to get you started:

  1. Develop feature months. Alternate between one month being focused on physical activity and the next on food and nutrition. Why not give each month a seasonal focus, e.g. summer splash in January, winter warm-up in July and Push Play month in October.
  2. Organise a series of seminars or workshops to increase everyone's knowledge of certain aspects of nutrition and physical activity. Invite an expert to speak on heart disease or diabetes, understanding food labels or maintaining good mental health. Run classes on healthy eating or organise a supermarket trip to learn about buying healthy food and drink.
  3. Run some friendly in-house competitions. Get each department to challenge another department to walk, run or swim the furthest in a month. Organise a healthy cooking competition and see who comes up with the yummiest recipe. Or have a quiz night to test people's knowledge of healthy nutrition options and physical activity.
  4. Make your next team building exercise an active or healthy eating one. Contact an outdoor recreation provider and have an active day out of the office as a team. Or learn to cook healthy food together - there are a number of providers who organise group cooking sessions.
  5. Social occasions are good fun and a great opportunity to get to know people who you may not work with directly. Why not make your next social club event an active one? Visit your local bowling club, organise a progressive meal around town and walk, run or cycle from one place to another, or try rock-climbing.
Inspiring ideas
Women walking up steps.

Igniting the SPARC

SPARC may be the government agency charged with getting people up and active but turning that message inward and motivating its own staff is a new challenge.

The organisation is working with the Ministry of Health on the Government Walking the Talk initiative. It's aimed at encouraging state sector employers to help staff become more physically active and eat healthy food. Organisational Development Manager, Donna Ransom, believes 'SPARCies' are already a pretty fit lot but she's still feeling the pressure. "We're supposed to be the gurus when it comes to fitness so naturally all eyes are on us to see how well we do."