While more than 50% of workplaces are offering flexible or remote work schedules, according to Gallup, keeping employees engaged, productive and healthy is the newest challenge for employers.
Among employees experiencing low engagement and wellbeing, more than 30% intend to search for a new job, according to Gallup. To avoid losing valuable talent, employers should promote wellbeing and social opportunities in the workplace, especially for remote workers who don’t have the benefit of seeing each other in the office, the research says.
Amenities management firm LulaFit has created a platform designed to address those challenges by providing employees with virtual social, fitness and wellness experiences. LulaFit LIVE is accessible via desktop and mobile devices and provides programming comparable to the experiences LulaFit typically offers on-site, such as social gatherings and exercise classes.
LulaFit LIVE offers a range of private events organizations can host for employees, including group yoga nights and trivia nights, one of the program’s most popular offerings. Although such experiences are moderated by LulaFit representatives, top executives will often be invited to participate by reading some of the trivia questions, for example.
“That definitely increases and encourages full participation from the group. They get pretty excited to see a senior leader come on and be reading these questions,” Grobstein says.
LulaFit LIVE also has livestream and on-demand content such as exercise and meditation classes. The schedule provides flexibility for workers to tune in when it best fits their schedule, Grobstein says.
“We have a live class schedule that we post every week so you can arrange your schedule around those live classes. But of course, not everyone is going to make the live classes for one reason or another, even though we're at home, so we also have classes that they can join at any time on their own schedule,” Grobstein says.
Improving engagement and wellbeing for remote employees will likely remain crucial as many organizations will likely continue to offer remote work options for employees even after the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 25% to 30% of the workforce will be working from home for at least part of the week by the end of 2021, Global Workplace Analytics predicts. LulaFit aims to address this changing office dynamic by having its virtual offering be used in tandem with the on-site experiences it offers.
“We have full intentions of having our virtual experience compliment on-site, if and when we are back,” Grobstein says. “Even when everyone's back in the office, there will still be people who won't always be there, who will be traveling for business, for example. They’ll always have a touchpoint to the company or to the building with this virtual amenities experience.”
