HEART Challenge
Our People
The HEART 800 mile Challenge
When we put a hold on branch activity a few weeks ago and furloughed 80% of our employees across the country, we didn’t do it lightly. So, we decided to come up with a company-wide fitness challenge to keep the home fires burning.
Making sure our staff feel part of the business whilst business is on hold is not easy. Daily contact in the form of a smile, wave or a dollop of office banter are difficult things to replace when you are miles apart and ‘offline’. It’s difficult to replace regular day to day contact. We are also very aware that some of our employees live alone and weeks of isolation could be a daunting prospect.
We have found Whats-App really useful here, building Whats-App teams for each branch has enabled us to share the best (not always appropriate!?) memes as well as pics and videos of people’s daily walks and exercise routines. And this got us thinking…
We really liked the idea of everyone keeping fit and healthy for the sake of their physical and mental health, so we came up with the 800 Mile HEART Challenge. Everyone in the business is invited to submit their daily exercise stats on their branch Whats-App group. We then input the miles walked / cycled / run into a spreadsheet and Taymar in our Manchester office moves the HEART icon along the map (we have even created a conversion table for those weightlifters and circuit trainers in the business, so they are not left out). The challenge is to virtually visit all branches before the end of lock down. It’s been a really great way of keeping spirits and hearts healthy. We recently tweaked the map to include the total mileage for each individual branch, just to get the competitive juices going!
The bi-daily posting of the map (with branch positions chalked up behind the ‘collective effort marker’) has been a great focus for banter and chat and I really believe it’s brought us closer together. Billy who works in our Warehouse in Manchester clocked up 47 miles yesterday and when I quizzed him on this he told me a couple of years ago he had cycled from John O Groats to Lands End in 10 days. Daryl, a Bristol driver regularly goes for 5 mile lunchtime walks. In contrast, other members of the team admitted they had not done any exercise in years but have been out pounding the pavement and are now talking about training for a half marathon. It’s great to see these small positives coming through and to get to know our staff better.
We have amazing people in our business, doing amazing things, everyday. It’s a privilege to employ them and such fun getting to know them better.
