150 million steps towards better wellbeing

Paolita Strandberg
WRITTEN BY PAOLITA STRANDBERG
Paolita works as a HR Business Partner at Helvar, focusing on various local and global people topics such as HR development and operations, talent acquisition and wellbeing. She has 15 years of experience from various HR roles in different industries, both in Finnish and global companies. She holds an M. Sc. (Econ.) in Management and Organisation from Hanken School of Economics.

150 million steps towards better wellbeing

At Helvar our people are our most important asset. Our approach to wellbeing is holistic; we support our employees’ mental, physical and social wellbeing and we want our employees to feel well, perform well and live well. By providing a bright office space with optimum lighting we support employee wellbeing and productivity in our office. In April 2020, our headquarters in Espoo, Finland, became WELL certified at gold level. The Helvar HQ project is the first new and existing interior to receive WELL certification according to the standard version 2 in the Nordic countries and is the fifth to be certified in Europe. The WELL Building Standard offers an excellent framework to design a people-focused workplace.

Helvar WELL certified

To further support the health and wellbeing of our people, we also offer various local and global wellbeing initiatives and tools. As part of our global wellbeing portfolio, we offer wellbeing as a service platform via Lifted, where our employees can remotely carry out self-study on various wellbeing related topics according to personal needs and areas of interest.

100-Day Global Health and Wellbeing Journey

From January to April 2020, we took a few more steps in our journey towards a healthier us by participating in a physical global challenge. The Virgin Pulse Global Challenge was a 100-day physical activity journey, which started in January 2020. In addition to the physical activity challenge, the journey also included online material and tips regarding various topics including nutrition, sleep and mental wellbeing.

The global challenge was a fun way to become healthier with some healthy competition between teams globally across the company. During the 100-day journey, there were daily discussions about the challenge in the office hallways and online in team chats. People asked each other how many steps they got, what their team ranking was and what they did to achieve those steps. In team chats, people encouraged each other and gave virtual awards for outstanding achievements and great efforts. The global challenge was a great way to get active and raise team spirit as shown in these comments below by participants from our offices in Finland, Sweden and the UK.

“The global health and wellbeing challenge was an inspirational exercise to self-monitor your health and fitness. It became a daily routine to watch the steps, sync the status, observe the team’s position on the dashboard and celebrate!”

“Well done team. This has been a great experience, one which I’d do with you all again”

“Team Sweden has found the challenge to be extremely positive, it was the difference from staying on the sofa to force yourself to the gym or out in the tracks”

“This challenge has been a great motivation for us to get in shape and we have thoroughly enjoyed the experience”

During the 100-days global challenge, together (a total of 14 Helvar teams, each with 7 participants per team) we managed to take approximately 150 million steps (96,000 km), which equates to 2.40 times around the world. We also managed to burn 66 million calories, which equals to over 21,000 hot dogs. Now, that’s what you call a lot of steps!

The global challenge was one way to help us stay active, but it was also a fun way to do things together across different teams and locations. We intend to do more health and wellbeing activities together in the future as us Helvarians like doing sports and social activities together, all with a bit of healthy competition of course!