Staff Health & Wellbeing has been at the heart of most progressive business for a while now but with so many of us working from home it has never been more prevalent. Sam Evans of Business in the Community Northern Ireland caught up with Henry Brothers to see what initiatives they had put in place with their employees.
Can you tell us about some of the Health and wellbeing initiatives you’ve done?
During these uncertain times Henry Brothers have ensured our employees health and wellbeing remains a priority. Whilst we have completed a range of health and wellbeing initiatives over the course of the past year our most recent initiative has been the Henry Group Fitness Factor.
Members of the Henry Group workforce were encouraged to look after their physical and mental health during February / March under a new programme offered to all our personnel. The Henry Group partnered with Keith Bigger of RE: Health & Fitness and the well-known mental health charity, AWARE to provide our employees with a brand-new 6-week health & wellbeing programme ‘The Fitness Factor’.
One of the main aims of the programme was to get everyone to work together and get them thinking and talking about something else rather than Covid and help them get that bit fitter at the same time. The programme commenced with a significant number of sign-ups, who were divided into groups that network regularly, providing each other with support as well as a good level of friendly competition. The programme provided 3 Live Workouts per week that could be completed at a time to suit each individual. Regular check-ins were essential to make sure everyone was progressing with their fitness mission. Some fun challenges were thrown in along the way. Of course, there were prizes to act as motivators as progress was made with an end-game winner who was awarded one extra day’s leave and other goodies as their prize.
We are very pleased to support our personnel in this way and we are delighted with the number of people that signed up to join the Fitness Factor programme and to hear about the progress of our colleagues as we got fit and looked after our mental health together.
Why was it important for you to do something around fitness?
We are all very conscious of the importance to look after our physical and mental health especially in these unprecedented times. Within the Henry Group we feel that it is important to support the wellbeing of our personnel especially during these difficult times when everyone’s work routine has been changed and therefore we made a corporate decision to offer a fitness programme to our personnel right across the Henry Group.
We partnered with Keith Bigger of RE: Health & Fitness who produced all the workout plans and weekly challenges ,his team kept everyone motivated along the way providing some really good results. We also teamed up with AWARE, as we wanted to ensure that we had the right balance of physical and mental fitness for all those taking part.
What was the feedback/results like?
The feedback the company has received from the fitness factor has been excellent. Our employees really valued the opportunity to get involved in the initiative. Below are just a number of quotes received through our feedback form:
“It was a brilliant idea and highly enjoyable. The workouts were recorded so they could be built into the day nicely. Loved getting to know others in Henry Group better”.
“It was great to be provided with the opportunity to try this type of fitness from home as it is very unlikely, I would have attended a gym. I have learnt a lot of the correct way to do the exercises and will attempt to do this on a regular basis.”
“I don’t know what I am going to do now to keep this up, I will miss it I have to say it really was great.
An excellent programme for the company to run, thank you :)”
“Superb initiative and very well delivered. It’s given me the motivation and determination I needed to make much needed changes to my lifestyle and remember I’m not just a mum who constantly supports the sporting efforts of her sons – time for me is important too and I had really forgotten that.”
“The fitness factor was the thing I didn’t know I needed. Would definitely recommend to friends and family that working out regularly and having a routine can be really helpful in the current climate where so much else seems uncertain.”
“Brilliant incentive and great for mental and physically health.”
Any personal highlights?
The Fitness Factor had many highlights for personnel.
Over the 6-week period personnel completed 18 workouts, 5 step challenges (totalling 76,000 steps), 3 press up challenges (220 press ups), 2 squat challenges (170 squats), burpee challenge (160 burpees), 5 minutes of plank, 6 minutes of wall sits, 2 bench dips challenges (250 dips), weekend of steps challenge, 10k walk challenge, 5k run, 2 run challenges (65 minutes), 1000 rep challenge.
They also took photos of their breakfast, lunch and dinner. Showed acts of kindness and stated what they were grateful for. They had an appreciation of women on international women’s day and completed the Turkish get up challenge. Finally, they completed 2 Mini Murph’s (not for the faint hearted).
One of the main highlights for the team was the weekend steps challenge, where each participant was competing against each other to see who could get the highest number of steps over 43 hours. The whole team completed 820,617 steps. Based on the average step count of 2000 to the mile, the team walked somewhere in the region of 410 miles.
I would recommend this type of programme to any business that want to bring their employees together while helping them with their Health and Wellbeing at the same time. After all we are Altogether Stronger.