Workplace Olympics ideas to engage employees

Check out these workplace Olympics ideas for infusing fun into your company culture and activating employees using your intranet.

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The 2024 Paris Olympics are upon us and they present a fantastic opportunity to engage employees through participation and celebration in your organization.

Transforming your organization into a mini Olympic village with themed activities can significantly boost morale and motivation, inspiring employees to bring their best to work, fostering camaraderie, and creating shared memories. This not only enhances interpersonal relationships but also cultivates a vibrant and positive environment that people are happy to be a part of.

Your modern intranet should provide a wealth of features to help you do just that. Here are five high-impact ideas to activate your workforce, turn your intranet into an workplace Olympics engagement hub, and make your organization a frontrunner in the competition for company culture excellence:

5 employee engagement ideas for your very own workplace Olympics

1. Recipe share: A healthy Olympian challenge

Athletes are known for their dedication to healthy living, so why not inspire your employees to embrace a healthy lifestyle with a “Healthy Olympian” recipe challenge. You can start by creating a dedicated community on your intranet for sharing recipes inspired by Olympic athletes’ diets or healthy dishes perfect for watching the games.

If your intranet doesn’t include a communities feature, you could create an intranet blog or homepage post that employees can participate with by adding comments, or create a forum post.

Social intranet features can be useful for boosting interaction, inspiring creativity, and encouraging healthy competition. Using Interact’s social timeline feed, employees can share photos of their culinary creations and include any relevant #hashtags that you designate to the challenge.

2. Going for gold: Trivia!

Fuel some friendly competition and test your employees’ Olympic knowledge with a regularly occurring trivia challenge, or ask them to predict the outcome of specific games within the Olympics.

To do this, you could use your intranet’s social feed to pose Olympic-themed questions or call for predictions.

If your intranet doesn’t offer social features, regular pages or forum Posts will do. You can encourage participation by awarding your employees points for correct answers through your intranet’s rewards and recognition program.

3. Olympic athlete challenge

Encourage employees to get into the games just like Olympic athletes by tracking their daily or weekly activity levels. Employees can utilize wearable devices or smartphone apps to track steps, distance, and other fitness metrics.

Why not create a community and use it to set up virtual challenges inspired by different Olympic sports, such as a marathon challenge, swimming relay, or cycling race? You can create teams or have individual participants compete to reach specific goals, offer rewards and recognition for top performers, and encourage employees to share their progress and achievements on the company intranet.

This initiative promotes a healthy lifestyle, team spirit, and a sense of accomplishment, and those who take part can encourage others to push harder and applaud them for the work they are doing.

4. Olympic charity challenge

Unleash your team’s competitive spirit while making a difference with the Olympic Charity Challenge. This involves dividing employees into teams and encouraging them to accumulate points through physical activities like walking, running, or cycling – or you can use a mix of ideas found inside this article.

The team that racks up the most points during your workplace Olympics wins a prize, but the ultimate goal is to raise funds for a chosen charity. This initiative fosters teamwork, promotes a healthy lifestyle, and creates a sense of purpose as employees unite to support a worthy cause. Combining friendly competition with charitable giving can ignite employee enthusiasm and make a lasting impact.

This idea is a great overlay to everything you do in your workplace during the Olympics. It can be the ultimate layer for which everyone competes.

5. Spirit days: dress for the games

Inject a dose of fun into your work week with themed spirit days! Announce the days and themes (think sports disciplines, participating countries, or iconic Olympic colors) by building specific pages on each one and promoting them to your internal audience, ensuring everyone is ready for the challenge.

Encourage employees to showcase their workplace Olympics spirit by sharing photos of themselves sporting their themed attire on your intranet social feed, and if your intranet allows filtering by topic, you can apply one to their posts, creating a vibrant visual representation of your company’s Olympic enthusiasm. Alternatively, a page with comments enabled or a forum thread will do just fine if your intranet lacks social media features.

You could take this a step further and provide rewards for categories such as Most Creativity Outfit, Best Group Costume, Most Liked, and Best Overall Spirit, and present these awards at the end in the spirit of the Olympics.

Bonus idea: pass the torch

An Olympics-inspired digital torch relay is a great way to ignite a wave of excitement and connection. Kickstart this interactive campaign by having your CEO virtually pass the torch to another employee via a comment on a designated intranet post. Each employee who receives the torch then passes it on by mentioning another colleague in their comment. Track the torch’s journey across the organization, creating a sense of community and anticipation as employees eagerly await their turn to carry the flame.

To add an extra layer of fun, consider incorporating challenges or questions for each torchbearer to complete before passing it on. This will encourage creativity and engagement while extending the lifespan of the campaign.

Let the workplace Olympics games begin!

These workplace Olympics initiatives can transform your intranet into a vibrant hub of employee engagement and excitement. Remember, the key to success lies in choosing activities that resonate with your employees’ interests and passions.

Whether you opt for friendly competition, knowledge-building, or charitable giving, celebrating the 2024 Paris Olympics within your organization presents a unique opportunity to foster a stronger sense of community and shared purpose. So, get ready to ignite the Olympic spirit and create unforgettable memories for your employees!

Main image by Freepik.