Get Moving! Arconic Businesses, Locations Answer the Call

From Olympic-like games to activity challenges, Arconic businesses and locations worldwide are answering the call to get their employees moving.

Arconic Forgings and Extrusions (AFE) tapped into the excitement of the summer Olympics in Rio by holding its own Summer Wellness Games this past July and August. More than 300 employees at 16 global locations went for the gold, or rather the traveling Golden Sneaker that sits in a place of honor at a location earning first place in a wellness challenge.

“In 2015, our Hannover, Germany, location earned the right to display the Golden Sneaker following the Global Corporate Challenge,” said Alex Polky, AFE health and safety manager and organizer of the Summer Wellness Games. “When our employees expressed interest in a challenge to get the trophy traveling, we created the Summer Wellness Games.”

The games consisted of five mini events that touched on the major aspects of well-being:

• Get Moving calendar, which offered daily activity challenges for July;
• Healthy selfie, where an employee took a selfie while engaging in a healthy activity or enjoying a healthy meal, snack, or beverage. Camera-shy employees could share a healthy recipe instead;
• Stress relief, with employees sharing what they found to be their best stress reliever;
• Community sharing, where employees provided interesting facts or photos about their communities; and
• A puzzle and brain teaser worksheet to stimulate the mind.

Locations received points for employee participation and other key criteria, with gold, silver and bronze awards going to the locations with the highest scores for each event. The location with the most points overall—Ickles, United Kingdom—received the Golden Sneaker.

“I learned a couple of valuable lessons,” said Polky. “The first is to avoid a challenge in the late summer months, when a lot of employees are on vacation. Give your wellness SPAs ample time to prepare for the activity, and keep the location communications manager involved. Also be aware of what’s going on at the location to avoid scheduling an activity when employees may be distracted. We had a lot of locations undergoing corporate audits, and I think that impacted participation.”

No such distractions existed at the Kawneer location in Springdale, Arkansas, USA, which conducted a 2016 team competition based on the Global Corporate Challenge that drew in 45 percent of the workforce. Thirty teams of seven employees logged 250 million steps with an average daily step count of 14,144 from June 4 through Sept. 11.

“I built an activity tracking system in Excel, giving each participant an individual worksheet that linked to a summary sheet,” said Charlie Carpenter, extrusions press scheduler and wellness committee member at Springdale. “It in no way matched the online resources and capabilities of GCC, but it was functional.”

Carpenter’s advice to other locations conducting a similar challenge? Break the teams into leagues based on an average step goal. For example, people who want to strive for 10,000 steps would be in one league competing against each other, while those who want to push to 20,000 steps would be in another.

“This gives employees people to compete against in their activity range so they don’t get discouraged when they see other participants putting in high numbers,” said Carpenter. “I also advise frequent updating of the leaderboard to give teams more incentive to up their step counts.”

Interested in other ideas to get your employees moving? Send an email to ArconicWellness@arconic.com.

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Ickles employees Victoria Hill (left), EHS coordinator and wellness SPA, and Richard Lucas, manufacturing manager, receive the Golden Sneaker from Alex Polky, AFE health and safety manager.