Top 20+ best summer wellness challenges for employees
Summer is the perfect time to refresh and motivate your team with workplace wellness challenges. Investing in these challenges can reduce your team’s stress, encourage them to be active, and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Here, we share some fun summer wellness challenge ideas for wellness companies that you can easily implement.
It could be as simple as Mindful Mondays and Wellness Wednesdays or 10K step challenges and even cooking challenges. Do not worry, you’ll find something that suits your team best below!
Our top 20+ most engaging summer challenge ideas at work
Idea #1: Teamupp app summer challenge
With the Teamupp app, you can access different wellness challenges to keep your team engaged. Think of fitness, health, step challenges, quizzes, video challenges, and more – Teamupp has it all. Our app connects teammates who work remotely, meaning that hybrid or remote companies can use this app to their advantage.
Price: from £0,5 to £1 per employee.
How to organise:
- Download the Teamupp app and set up a corporate account for your company.
- Create a challenge and invite your team to participate.
- Track your team’s progress on the dashboard.
- Reward your team as they achieve specific milestones.
Requirements: Any smartphones
Idea #2: 10,000 steps challenge
There’s no better time to get your team moving than during summer. So, get your team engaged in a daily 10,000-step challenge. For this, your employees will need a tracker to monitor their steps throughout the day. It’s fun, challenging, and engaging, and the cool part is that it will help everyone build healthy routines and increase their physical activity.
Price: Free if your employees use their devices
How to: Set daily step goals and encourage your team to participate. You can take the excitement a notch higher by telling your team to share pictures of them walking on their step-tracking app and show how many steps they’ve taken.
Requirement: Smartphone or fitness tracker.
Idea #3: Daily hydration challenge
Summer is beautiful but it has its challenges, especially the heat, which can cause dehydration. It’s the best time to start a daily hydration challenge at the office and encourage your team to drink a set amount of water – ideally 2-4 litres per day.
Price: Free
How to: Set daily water goals for your team and send reminders throughout the day in your official communication channels.
Requirements: Water bottles and a tracker, which most of your team members probably have already.
Idea #4: Fruit & veggie intake challenge
You can challenge your team to eat at least five servings of vegetables and fruits daily throughout the challenge. It can also create a sense of camaraderie as everyone is bringing fruits and vegetables to work every day as part of the challenge.
Price: Free if your employees bring their own fruits and vegetables. However, you could consider adding fruits and veggies to your staff kitchens to show support for the challenge.
How to: Create a tracking system that everyone has access to so they can record their servings each day.
Requirements: Regular access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
Idea #5: Mindful Mondays
You can dedicate Mondays to mental wellness and let your employees participate in mindfulness activities, such as breathing exercises, journaling, and guided meditation. You can have this before your Monday meetings to get everyone zen and focused.
Price: Free, unless you decide to use paid meditation apps.
How to: Offer resources like meditation videos or host a group session at the office or virtually.
Requirements: Quiet space or meditation apps/free videos online.
Idea #6: Outdoor adventure challenge
Who says your team can’t enjoy the outdoors even during work hours? You can organise an outdoor adventure challenge on Fridays or every other Friday to get your employees outdoors. You can engage them in different activities, such as hiking, cycling, or exploring a local park. Trust us, it will benefit your team physically and mentally at the end of the week.
Price: Free, unless you need special equipment.
How to: Establish goals depending on how long you plan to spend outdoors. To add an element of fun, ask each team member to share pictures of their adventure.
Requirements: Safe outdoor location
Idea #7: Better sleep challenge
Consistent and quality sleep supports energy, focus, and overall health. While your team’s sleeping time is outside the office, you can do something to help them. Educate them on sleep and encourage them to aim for seven to nine hours of sleep every night. Educational resources could include videos on how your staff can set themselves up for quality sleep by regularly exercising, turning screens off after 9 pm, not eating too close to bedtime, and so on.
Price: Free
How to: Share sleep hygiene tips with your team and track their participation.
Requirements: Personal logs or tracking tools
Idea #8: Stretch breaks
This workplace wellness idea can help your team members to take a conscious break from their desks. They can perform regular stretches during the break to reduce tension, improve circulation, and prevent fatigue from sitting for too long. You can send automatic reminders via your communication channels at certain times of the day reminding your teams to take a stretch break before getting back to work.
Price: Free
How to: Schedule reminders or organise group stretch breaks
Requirements: Open space to stretch comfortably
Idea #9: Desk Yoga
This is one of our favourite summer challenge ideas because it’s easy to organise and costs little to nothing. Simple yoga poses at desks at intervals can help your team improve flexibility, relieve stress, and boost energy.
Price: Free, unless you decide to hire a yoga instructor
How yo: Share video resources with your team or schedule short live sessions.
Requirements: Space around your team’s desks
Idea #10: Gratitude journaling
Gratitude journalling can promote positivity and help your staff think more clearly. For this daily gratitude challenge, all you have to do is ask your employees to write down one thing they’re grateful for each day. You can even do it as a company where everyone shares something they are grateful for during their week.
Price: Free
How to: Ask each team member to get a personal journal or use shared documents hosted online
Requirements: Physical or online journals
Idea #11: “Me time” challenge
The “Me Time” Challenge can help your team members create time every day for activities they enjoy. This could be something as simple as taking some time out to sit outside and enjoy the fresh air.
Price: Free
How yo: Share different ideas on activities that your team can do and encourage them to participate.
Requirements: Accountability tracker
Idea #12: Summer reading challenge
Ask your employees to read a book for relaxation or personal development. All they have to do is choose a book of their choice and read it. You can also have a summer reading list where they can choose from.
Price: Free, unless you decide to buy the books
How to: Set a reading goal for everyone and organise a forum where everyone discusses what they have read.
Requirements: Books or e-readers.
Idea #13: 5K run challenge
This Pubmed endorphins and exercise study shows that running releases endorphins, which help to boost mood and prevent muscle pain. You can organise a 5K Run Challenge and encourage your team to complete the challenge by the end of summer. It’s also a good idea to share training resources to help them get started.
Price: Free if you organise it yourself
How to: Have a group goal and use tracking apps to make everyone accountable
Requirements: Access to safe running routes
Idea #14: Breathing exercise challenge
Breathing exercises can reduce anxiety and bring your teams into the present moment. This challenge could be especially useful during stressful times at work if there are hard deadlines and difficult tasks. Provide your teams with breathing exercise videos to reduce their stress. Learning how to properly breathe into the stomach is also an overlooked skill that can help your staff feel more energised and grounded.
Price: Free
How to: Share free breathing exercise videos with your team and run group sessions
Requirements: A quiet space
Idea #15: Cook-off challenge
This challenge lets you promote healthy eating among your teams. You can organise a cook-off challenge where your employees prepare healthy recipes at home and share them with their teammates.
Price: Free, unless you decide to pay for the ingredients
How to: Organise a virtual event where everyone shares recipes and prepares the meals. Every team member then votes on the best dish.
Requirements: Kitchen supplies and ingredients.
Idea #16: Financial wellness challenge
You can use this challenge to educate your employees on budgeting, saving, and learning how to manage their money better. Provide them with online resources with videos and articles each week that cover all the financial bases. It can reduce your team’s stress by feeling more confident about having a financial plan.
Price: Free, unless you choose paid sources for financial education
How to: Share financial resources with your team that covers a new topic each week.
Requirements: Access to financial resources online
Idea #17: Charity challenge
You could host charity events in the form of fitness challenges where your teams chip in money for a good cause. This can help them get more active and raise money for a good cause. This could be done with step challenges or running challenges. Put it out there to your teams and go with the popular suggestion that will get most of your staff involved.
Price: Donation through fitness challenges
How to: Partner with any local charity and encourage your team to volunteer.
Requirements: Connect to a local charity.
Idea #18: Goal-setting challenge
Educating your staff on how to properly set goals is a useful skill that they can use at work and in their personal lives. Goal-setting can help to put your teams on the right track and feel more at ease. Once they have clarity, any anxiety around work or personal things disappears.
Price: Free
How to: Provide online resources about goal-setting and encourage your teams to start setting goals and working towards them. You could even pair each person with an accountability partner.
Requirements: Goal-setting templates and resources.
Idea #19: Art therapy
You can inspire creativity among your teams with art therapy. It’s also a great way to help everyone relax. Art therapy can be in the form of painting or drawing.
Price: Free if you encourage teams to do it at home or a small cost if you give them the art supplies.
How to: Organise art sessions and use virtual tutorials.
Requirements: Art supplies
Idea #20: Dance-off challenge
This is a fun challenge that could be a real breath of fresh air for your office. Give your teams a new genre of music to listen to each week to create dance routines. You could split your workforce up into teams and have them showcase their dances at the end of each week.
It’s a fun way to bring teammates together and it also gets everyone moving more!
Price: Free
How to: Suggest new music genres every week and create dance-off teams. They have to create a dance routine each week to perform and you decide which is the best.
Requirements: An open space for dance-offs
Ready to take the next step in your workplace wellness this summer? Try some of the ideas listed above and boost your team’s wellbeing.
You can also try our Teamupp app to make organising wellness initiatives easier! Get you free demo today.
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