Spending more while business is compromised under lockdown may seem counter-intuitive. Yet when that investment is in your employees’ health and wellbeing, it is money well spent.
Daisy Corporate Services (dcs.tech), the UK’s leading provider of IT, communications and cloud solutions, was already committed to its employees’ physical and mental wellbeing prior to lockdown, having teamed up with Gympass in September 2019 to offer its 1,000-strong workforce access to a wealth of fitness sites and online resources.
The Covid-19 lockdown saw the vast majority of Daisy Corporate Services (DCS) colleagues working from home or furloughed. As with every other business in the land, this sudden switch in working practices had a profound effect on the workforce.
“We partnered with Gympass to help us achieve a more balanced health and wellbeing offering for all DCS employees,” says Damien Russell, HR Director at Daisy Corporate Services. “When we went into lockdown our employees’ physical and mental health became even more important as we sought to navigate the dramatic change in our working patterns.”
With a largely geographically dispersed workforce prior to lockdown, DCS was already adept at managing colleagues across its 30 UK locations. Around 30% of its employees already worked remotely so, again, it had some experience of managing teams working from home. Lockdown took this to a whole new level but DCS pivoted quickly to engage Skype and Teams technology to keep colleagues connected.
Managing everyone’s health and wellbeing became of paramount importance to DCS and the management team looked to Gympass to help develop and diversify its offering to ensure all colleagues remained fully supported at home.
“The new digital Gympass Wellness programming provided the vital and accessible options we needed at a time when there was no access to fitness facilities,” says Damien. “We were greatly impressed by the wealth of options available to our staff including mental health and wellbeing sessions and resources, financial wellbeing support, physical activity sessions and even family options. Everything was there to help us encourage our employees to take time to think and actively make positive changes to their physical and mental health which, in turn, has helped them sustain a healthier work/life balance.”
DCS invested additional funds to secure a free 3-month Gympass Wellness Starter Plan for all its employees prioritising this extra investment to secure them a range of health and wellbeing resources. Included in the package are over 20 health and wellbeing apps to help colleagues stay active and well at home. The diverse offering included everything from financial wellbeing support (Moneyed) to CBT courses to help manage anxiety and depression (Happier You) to guided meditations (Zen, Wellness Coach). Nutrition advice and recipe ideas (Nootrick), audio running programmes (Auro), kids activities (Neou), on-demand workout videos (FitOn, FIIT) and 1-to-1 virtual PT sessions (Magic Fitness) are also included. Finally, live online classes from some of Gympass’ operators partners including Bannatyne and DW Fitness First (DWFF) are provided. Following success with these, Gympass has just co-ordinated some exclusive online classes for DCS employees: starting from June 16th DWFF is running a 30-minute weekly HIIT class at 12pm each Tuesday just for DCS colleagues.
“Gympass has given us plenty of tools to help us support all our colleagues throughout lockdown,” says Damien. “From its new digital and wellbeing offering to support with communications and from webinars to bespoke programmes for our employees, Gympass has helped us prioritise colleagues’ wellbeing and activity during lockdown.
“This targeted and relevant offering has been second to none and truly helped us navigate this difficult period more easily.”