Team-building, and building connection and camaraderie whether it’s fully in-office, fully virtual or a hybrid between the two is critical to your culture.

In fact, a study from EY found that employees feel the greatest sense of belonging when their colleagues check in with them, both personally and professionally. According to Coqual, when people feel like they belong at work, they are more productive, motivated, engaged and 3.5 times more likely to contribute to their fullest potential. Even better, having a friend at work has been shown to help reduce work stress!

In the Wellness Challenges that we kicked off early this year, we intentionally created challenges (for points and prizes) around connecting with your team and doing specific challenges as a team. What’s neat is that the ‘team’ participants have created is often not their immediate work team, so they’re connecting on a deeper level with different and more friends/colleagues. 

In their brief weekly team check-in, participants can use that time to check in with each other about the challenge, about work in general, or just chat about their personal life; either way they are building friendships and connection.

A few examples of this are pictured below – you can see one team at East Side Games and another team at Odlum Brown doing their desk stretches together. You can also see a team at East Side Games sharing how much water they've drunk for the day, or their high protein breakfasts, two challenges that get a lot of chatter and positive feedback from participants.

I've really enjoyed the challenge program that Odlum has supported. It's an important investment in our health and well-being and team members take it seriously. The variety in the challenges along with the supporting resources kept us interested and engaged. It sparked great (and at times competitive!) conversations as we compared notes with other teams about their strategies. - Barbara Bahry, Wellness Challenge Participant @ Odlum Brown

If you’d like to host a wellness challenge for your organization to deepen connections and friendships and have your employees feel more connected, please click here to book a time to chat.‍

I really enjoyed the challenge as an opportunity to chase after healthy habits and goals with coworkers. There's something about doing these things in teams that creates a sense of accountability and positive competition that keeps you pushing yourself on the days you might've given up if you were doing it by yourself. - Tristin Sward, Wellness Challenge Participant @ East Side Games