Friday Fun: Company Sport Programs
Happy Friday Atlassian Community!
Does your company have programs to support living more healthily? At previous workplaces, we had things like “office fruit baskets” or gym cards, which, being lazy by heart and having other time-consuming hobbies, didn’t really move me.
That changed at EverIT, which has its own special sports program, called Sport Challenge, which even I enjoy very much. Starting during the first wave of the covid lockdowns, to keep the team spirit up, it is a periodical event that will reach its 6th Season this spring. Running 6-12 weeks, we form teams to compete against each other. The challenge is mainly point-based (we earn points based on a formula of doing different sports and the amount of time we do exercise - it can be whatever, even walking counts). It was good because the actual sports could take place in whatever form we choose, but the regular team meetings kept us in contact with each other - and it helped with my own onboarding as well, giving me an opportunity to mingle with people outside of my business unit.
The other half of the points come based on reaching milestones in a story. For the past two events, we had themes to our seasons: Last spring, we followed the story of the Lord of the Rings, with each step we recorded bringing the ring closer to Mordor for example, or counting killed orcs with each kg we lifted. We also had weekly extra challenges, putting goals and extra points for certain extra tasks (like which team could circle the largest areas on the map by hiking or cycling), and breaking the sport cycle, we also have some non-sport related challenges, like finding certain landmarks in our area for selfies (like for Lothlorien, finding the highest tree of your city, or standing in front of a large black gate), and online puzzles on a landing page our game master puts together for the challenges. Yes, at the height of the challenge, we need a half/full-time game master in the form of our security officer, who is also the mastermind behind this whole game. The Autumn season then had a Pirate team, with each team forming a pirate ship, like my team’s Kiwi Caravel.
Gondor calls for aid!
In the end, did the Sport Challenge help me reduce my lockdown tummy? Not much, but the trying is what counts, right?
What do you do at your organization? And how does our program sound? Should we open this up for an “Atlassian Partner Olympic”? 
12 comments
I work for AAA Insurance and we have a wellness program called Virgin Pulse. Virgin Pulse is an interactive, personalized well-being platform. All employees at my company can earn up to $500 in Pulse Cash incentives by playing level games each quarter, and consistently logging workouts. There are tons of activities, besides logging workouts and steps, that you can do to gain points. There are daily cards that teach you certain things about health and wellness, you can track healthy habits to say if you completed that habit that day or not, you can use the media to watch videos about various health and wellness subjects, you can look at recipes, get annual check-ups, and participate and complete challenges with friends. Then you can go spend your pulse cash in the Virgin Mall or buy gift cards with it! It's such a great program! I absolutely love it!
