Gamify every aspect of employee engagement
When you are a global company with multiple locations and campuses, including satellite and home offices, it can be challenging to create a cohesive, inclusive, and connective culture. Now add to that in recent times many companies deciding to get rid of offices altogether. It can feel almost impossible to properly focus on employee wellbeing and mindfulness.
Non-traditional benefits typically see the most significant availability at headquarters – now that HQ is de-emphasized due to work from home requirements and may be disappearing or minimizing significantly in the future, HR needs to find new ways to extend equitable engagement opportunities to all and in ways that meet the moment.
In this use case, we’ll discuss how this 10,000-person and privately held global security firm was on a mission to integrate creative ways to overhaul its total wellbeing without further taxing HR resources – and with a remote force.
Read Six Ways the HR can Engage a Geographically Distributed Workforce
Problem
The company was having a difficult time engaging its remote employees after they closed their physical offices. Despite global pandemic challenges, they were still experiencing exponential growth. Both in hiring new talent and in acquiring other upstarts and merging them into the company’s culture, it was suffering from growing pains and somewhat of an identity crisis. With total wellbeing, mental health, and mindfulness as a core mission, HR needed a solution to unite its people, while not adding any additional burden to the already taxed team.
They had multiple point solutions to increase engagement and participation. However, with the crisis, their entire engagement strategy had to pivot immediately. Because there were numerous platforms with different experiences and many that were no longer relevant for this moment, HR scrambled to find a unified solution that could bolster their culture, no matter where team members were.
Solution
The company engaged in a wellbeing, challenges, and achievements solution that supported all the activities they had through multiple point solutions, and on a single and integrated platform. Cutting their costs by more than 75%, HR used this new platform to launch virtual live fitness classes, meditation, mindfulness, and overall health challenges within days. They were also able to deliver automatic notifications to employees via email, native mobile app, and an exclusive Slack channel they had set up.
Adoption skyrocketed to 96% across the entire organization. It was easy for HR and gratifying to the employee, as their previously normal activities had come to a screeching halt. With level-up rewards badges, leaderboards, custom badges, and awards won at the end of a challenge, employees discovered positive, engaging activities and an increased sense of workplace community. The awards could be fulfilled for company swag or great (even if remote or virtual) experiences.
Because the platform dramatically cut costs, this company also launched a new reimbursement program more appropriate for this new normal. This included ergonomics and home office support, homeschooling aids, meals, and meal delivery, mental health and meditation, virtual fitness and equipment reimbursements, and more.
Additionally, the platform supported all languages and currencies, creating an inclusive all-in experience for all employees.
What’s next? Learn more about culture cohesion through challenges in part two of this series
Here are some examples of wellbeing and mindfulness challenges
- Have a virtual coffee, lunch, happy hour or some other fun thing with a workmate or workmates, not on your team – this client in particular chose a random generator to bring people together!
- Take a meeting for a walk and off camera and reduce “Zoom Fatigue”
- Connect with family and friends via phone or video
- Volunteer in your community
- Attend a live virtual class, including fitness, meditation, and cooking
- Achieve a specified number of steps in a day with integration to fitness trackers
- Eat a rainbow on your plate – bonus if you grew it!
- Start your day with positive intention.
- Take three minutes for deep breathing and no work!
- 20-minutes of planned movement (chasing children or furry creatures count)!
We’ve experienced a significant loss in this time, while also being catapulted into a new future. This is the time for positive change that we can rely on, no matter what circumstances face us in the future.
Check out more on how Espresa can help you engage and delight employees with challenges and achievements.
