A common question we get from coaches and teachers of the PLT4M community is: “Can WE follow a PLT4M program?” And the answer is YES!
While “staff wellness” comes in many forms, we encourage you to tap into the resources available in PLT4M to provide a fitness-based staff wellness initiative for your faculty.
This article outlines the steps you can take to launch a staff wellness challenge at your school!
*Please note: in order for staff to be able to access and record workouts in PLT4M, they will need to occupy a student license. Don’t have any spare spots for staff? Contact us about upgrading, or, you can still follow the program and track the wellness challenge outside of PLT4M.
Start by watching the video, and then read the steps below!
Step 1: Create a Staff Wellness Group
To get things started, we recommend creating a group for your staff wellness challenge. We recommend making this group private so that students don’t accidentally join the group.
Step 2: Select Program Options for your Wellness Challenge
Next, you’ll want to assign program(s) to your Staff Wellness Group. In your program library, you’ll find a program labeled “Staff Wellness.” This program consists of 30 workouts spread across 10 weeks (3 workouts per week), with a weekly fitness challenge and suggested “bonus sessions.”
Download the Staff Wellness Calendar - feel free to insert your own dates onto this calendar, and use it to help keep staff on track with your wellness challenge!
Equipment Needed for the Staff Wellness Program:
- jump rope
- dumbbells
- kettlebells
- medicine ball
Nice to have:
- Any cardio machine (rower, bike, etc)
- pull up bar
While the Staff Wellness program is a great option, it is certainly not your only option. You could also check out:
...or any other program in PLT4M that you think your staff would be interested in!
Step 3: Determine Criteria for Scoring
If you plan to launch a formalized staff wellness challenge, you’ll want to come up with the criteria you’ll use to track participants performance in the challenge. Below are some ideas:
The following data can be obtained through PLT4M:
- Participation reports - this will tell you how many workouts each person has completed throughout the challenge. This could be tracked as time spent working out, or, number of workouts completed. See: how to create a participation report
- Progress Reports - this will tell you how much progress each participant has made in the fitness challenges. Points may be awarded to the top 3 progress leaders, for example. See: how to create progress reports
- Leaderboards - custom leaderboards can be created for each fitness challenge. Points may be awarded to the top 3 leaders on each leaderboard, for example. See: how to build a leaderboard
Other ideas for criteria (to be collected outside of PLT4M)
- points for sharing recipes
- points for reaching target water intake
- points for spending time meditating
- points for going for a walk
Example point system:
- 1 point per workout completed within the "Staff Wellness Program"
- 1 point per bonus workout session completed (Yoga, Boxing, Pilates)
- 3 points for placing 1st in fitness challenge
- 2 points for placing 2nd in fitness challenge
- 1 point for placing 3rd in fitness challenge
- 3 points for placing 1st in fitness challenge progress leaders
- 2 points for placing 2nd in fitness challenge progress leaders
- 1 point for placing 3rd in fitness challenge progress leaders
Step 4: Promote Your Wellness Challenge!
First, you’ll want to inform your staff about the challenge, and then start collecting the names of your participants! Access our optional Staff Wellness Challenge Email Template to help you introduce the challenge to your staff. Please read through the template, as you’ll need to adjust it to include your challenge details.
If you plan to incorporate the staff wellness program into your challenge, you may want to share the staff wellness calendar with the staff, or even hang it around the school for extra motivation!
Once you have your participant list, instruct them on how to register for PLT4M! We recommend using the Join Code to allow your staff members to register themselves.
Ideas, Tips & Best Practices
- Identify a staff wellness challenge leader. It’s important to identify a leader who will ensure proper tracking is taking place, and, to answer any questions participants may have. It’s nice if this person is already familiar with PLT4M.
- Schedule dedicated time when staff can access the facilities to complete their workouts.
- You may even create a schedule of specific workouts taking place, so that staff members can do workouts together, and be more motivated to show up to do the workout on campus.
- Organize participants into teams, if you believe this will create more incentive to participate.
- Include prizes (school hoodie, additional PTO, department lunch, etc).
- if you are currently registered as a staff member in PLT4M, you may create an additional “student” account by using a different email (such as a personal email) to access the staff wellness workouts.
- Remain in constant communication with your challenge participants! Remind them of upcoming fitness challenges, announce weekly participation leaders, highlight leaderboard leaders, etc.
Have fun!
If you have any questions about how to run your staff wellness challenge, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@plt4m.com. We’d love to help you out!