1xHEALTH: The future of work is health and wellbeing

At 1xINTERNET, we kicked off the year with a workplace health challenge, so far so cliché BUT this wasn't your typical challenge - it was multifaceted, all inclusive and community building (at least that was the intention). We offered three optional "challenges" that employees could choose from for the first month - stay hydrated, be active for a minimum of 30 minutes a day and abstain from alcohol. There was also the option to set your own challenge, and we were inspired by our colleagues' personal missions ranging from walking 30 km a week to reducing mobile phone use. It might be arbitrary but the start of a year feels like a good time to begin, and this year we are putting health and wellbeing in the spotlight.

1xHEALTH CHALLENGE

I'll be honest, I totally failed the challenge I set myself of walking 5km a day but I did learn something about setting realistic goals which was actually the point of this kick off. I improved my sleep routine by developing a read before bed habit inspired by the advice of a colleague. Our Monday morning meetings focused on health topics; sleep, goal setting and nutrition among others, sharing experiences and inspiration, things that have worked for us and useful tips. There was even a practical sprouting demonstration - germinating seeds for full enzyme power.

Activity days at our office bases

Continuing on from the first month of “challenges'' we have developed different ways to put 1xHEALTH in focus as part of our working days. We use a slack channel to share successes, frustrations and healthy recipes. We organized group activities from each office base. The Spanish group did a 10km bike ride around the beautiful Los Toruños natural park followed by a healthy lunch together by the sea in El Puerto de Santa Maria. The German team went to an indoor jumping activity center in Frankfurt where Artem found his inner torpedo (see photographic evidence below).

1xHEALTH & Wellbeing 

We are serious about the value we place on work life balance at 1xINTERNET which is why we've made it part of our company philosophy. 1xHEALTH is about fostering community and inclusivity. When Icelandic colleague Hrafi came to visit the Conil office she joined three of the Spanish colleagues who go regularly to the climbing gym to try out climbing for the first time. 

We're not into rewarding the fastest or strongest but we aim to encourage and inspire each other wherever we are on our health and wellbeing journey. It has been shown that flexibility at work improves mental and physical health which is why we offer flexible remote working options to all of our employees. Our teams collaborate and communicate; stepping out of the home office to stretch your legs after sitting in front of the computer is a necessary part of the working day. 

Views shared from employee activities in different locations - the difference between going for a walk in Spain and Iceland.

5K DAY for World Cancer Day

In February we did a “5K DAY” everyone was encouraged to run, walk, swim, crawl  5km sharing their route in their respective locations. This was fun and really brought home how different our locations are, and how different it is to train in different places. They´re hardcore in Iceland. I am not sure I would find the motivation to run 5km with the wind and ice and snow but Fanney and Hadda did and they deserve extra stars for that! Some members of our team donated money for cancer research with their 5km participating in a campaign being run by our clients UICC. UICC were running a  worldwide 5k campaign to raise awareness for the work they are doing to close the care gap, a worthy cause we are more than happy to support.

From Berlin to Conil: 2,723 collective km´s

Inspired by our collective movement efforts we designed a collective mission - to get from our Berlin office to our Conil office in one month, that´s 2,723km! Activities that are counted in minutes were converted to km´s and together we rowed, kite surfed, climbed, ran, walked, biked and swam our collective selves the 2,723km to make it all the way to Conil.  In June we will all meet up in Conil so we decided to keep on going, to see if we can get all the way around the world in the 80 days left until we meet. Let's see if we can motivate each other to go the distance… watch this space! And watch this 1xHEALTH team go!