2 Tips to Cultivate Gratitude Using Your Virgin Pulse Wellbeing Program

Tip #1: Nurture a Sense of Unity Toward a Charitable Goal by Launching a Staged Charity Step Challenge

What is a Staged Charity Step Challenge?

While it may seem like a mouthful to say, a staged charity step challenge honors our standard configuration options across our step-challenge offering. Clients can choose a theme from our Staged Challenge library or customize the challenge to reflect the charity of choice, making the challenge custom. When planning your challenge, you have the option to set up the teams so that participants are pre-assigned and based on organizational hierarchy. If you do not want to pre-assign teams, you can also select from a 5, 8, or 10-player team structure and members can join a team once enrollment opens and through to the end of the challenge.

The unifying quality of staged challenges is that the entire participating population unlocks the stages as they take steps during the duration of the challenge! And, with all our challenges, we guarantee engagement along the way with email communication. For example, participants will receive an email every time the group unlocks a stage.

Working toward the same goal will bring a feeling of unity across participants and your organization while boosting motivation at each milestone. At the end of the challenge, the donation value achieved is announced via email and displayed on a challenge leaderboard on the platform for all to see.

Choosing a Charity for your Challenge

While there are numerous charities with countless more being founded every day, we challenge you and your organization to select one that has meaning to you. Often, your employees are more passionate about a certain cause than you may realize, whether that be from a personal experience or even through a coworker. We encourage you to ask your employees about what inspires them. If your employees are working towards a cause they are more passionate about, then the better chance of participating in your challenge.

Tie wellbeing to your philanthropic efforts and select a charity your employees can get behind. Work with your Account Manager or check out some of these tips to help get you started:

• Survey your employees to see what inspires them and what they are passionate about in their life, whether personal or through another colleague.
• Check out resources such as GreatNonprofits.org or GiveWell.org to help determine which charity best suits you and your organization if you are having trouble finding one.
• If you run your challenges during the holidays, choose an organization that is centered around ensuring those less fortunate are taken care of during this time of year.

For more details and promotional materials for the challenge, head over to the Client Resource Center (password: VirginPulseCRC!) and work with your Client Success team to build a Charity Step Challenge.

Tip #2: Strengthen the Habits that Help Foster Gratitude through Promoted Healthy Habit challenges

What is a Promoted Healthy Habit Challenge?

These types of challenges are weeklong and are centered around a healthy habit that stems from one of the Virgin Pulse topics of interest. Participants that join in the challenge will be greeted with the rules of the game, and the tips for each day of the week for staying on track. The main interaction for the participants lies in the Yes/No tracker across each day of the week – members that follow the tips for each day are asked to mark “yes” five out of seven days. After the challenge is over, members can choose to continue to track the healthy habit, encouraging a long-term relationship for tracking that habit and making it stick. We also recommend rewarding members who participate to build on the motivation to join and track each challenge!

Healthy Habit Suggestions for Gratitude:

To strengthen or build habits around gratitude, Virgin Pulse has a few healthy habit challenges in our library that can help you focus on practicing habits that cultivate gratitude and happiness for your employees. Choose from any of these that are available in your client admin portal:

• Appreciate Others: Recognizing others can be a small act with big benefits. Ready to Unlock the power of appreciation? (Topic: Building Relationships)
• Helping Hand: Helping others build relationships, boosts your mood, and increases your self-esteem. This week, seek out opportunities to be helpful (Topic: Building Relationships)
  

How to Create Promoted Healthy Habit Challenges in Your Client Admin Portal

Promoted Healthy Habits challenges are simple to create and can be configured in your Client Admin Portal. If you are new to the feature, work with your Client Success Team for a tutorial. We also have instructions documented on the Client Resource Center (password: VirginPulseCRC!). For your convenience, these instructions outline every step to take for creating your challenge. Note that if you are building a custom challenge, the habit must be added to your program before you can build the challenge around it.

💻 Visit the Client Resource Center for guides, marketing assets, training, and more! (Password: VirginPulseCRC!)