Four Tips to Keep Your Co-Workers Healthy and Sane in a Pandemic

Four Tips to Keep Your Remote Co-Workers Healthy and Sane

More than a billion people across the planet are working from home today, doing their best in their pajamas to keep the global economy afloat. This new normal will likely endure for another month, at least. Each day at Count.It, we’re getting questions from concerned managers asking how they can keep their co-workers healthy, connected, and, well, sane. We’ve gathered a few simple ideas in the list below. But first, two overarching themes to guide you:

• Ritual is your friend. With normal daily habits thrown out the door, everyone is grasping for new routines to help themselves feel grounded. Whatever you do, make it recurring and dependable.
• Find a good online communications platform. Zoom is booming now for a reason, but so too are group messaging platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. The latter two, especially, are well suited for “asynchronous” check ins and fitness challenges. Bottom line, choose your platform, and use it.

Without further ado, then, her are four tips for your work from home teams….

1. Virtual Fitness Tracker Challenges: “Walking is the best medicine,” said Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, and he was right. The office may be closed, but people can get outside to go for walks or rides. These days every modern smartphone is a pedometer. To encourage people to stay moving (safely), and to build camaraderie, consider launching a fitness tracker challenge for your company or group. The following social challenge platforms, including Count.It, are among the best, most affordable, and most user-friendly fitness tracker challenge solutions. All of them connect seamlessly to top fitness tracking apps, and offer support for teams, rewards, and track a variety of activities, including walking, running, and cycling, all of which are still possible in the post-pandemic world…. (Count.It, MoveSpring, Wellable , Walker Tracker, Challenge Runner, InkIn)
2. Virtual yoga & meditation classes: If ever there was a time for a “mindfulness” practice, now is that time. Yoga and meditation can be done in almost any space (read: your bedroom, bathroom, basement), and you may find your co-workers more receptive to these practices now than ever. Following is a list of Count.It partners, as well as a “B2B” program from Headspace, the popular meditation app. (Exubrancy, Headspace for Work, Amber Gregory Yoga.)
3. Push Up (or insert your exercise) Challenge: We’ve seen teams, typically those using group messaging tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, doing simple exercise challenges. For example, over the course of the day, individuals take a break to do short sets (10 or 20) of pushups (or other similar exercise), and then they post their count to a shared #channel. Others do the same, and the effect it to provide a forum for co-workers to cheer each other on to do small things that can, over time, make a big difference.
4. A Virtual Dance: Everyone loves to dance, and dancing is another activity that can be done in the privacy of one’s bedroom, even with headphones. In recent years, a number of “dance meditation” or “ecstatic” dance classes have emerged, all of which offer the catharsis of a great night at the club, without the booze, door fee, or troublesome interactions with strangers. Most of these IRL organizations have launched virtual versions of their classes in the last few weeks, and the early reviews are positive. It may not be as good as the live experience, but you can still “drop in.” (5Rhythms Live, The Get Down, Daybreaker Live.)