Why should your company encourage employees to get outside?

Research shows that spending time outdoors not only improves overall health & reduces stress, but it also increases attention, focus, creativity, productivity and performance!

This could have a widespread impact on job satisfaction, employee retention, quality issues, safety performance, productivity time and healthcare costs!

For more information on why your company should encourage employees to spend more time outdoors, click here or check out the articles below.

How to Encourage Employees to Get Outside

Campaign Related:

1. Bulletin Boards: Use the free campaign poster (11×17) or flyer (8.5×11) as a centerpiece on a bulletin board in a public area (by the time clock, etc.). Post pictures, maps and brochures of local parks, such as this one from Portage Park District, for both information and inspiration! Allow employees to pin a picture of their vacation or favorite outdoors spot on the bulletin board as well.
2. Employee Newsletters: Include a Get Outside section in your weekly or monthly employee newsletter, encouraging employees to spend more time outdoors. Highlight benefits or local parks they can visit. If electronic, link to outside articles, maps, brochures, podcasts and resources that may help inspire them to take the next step.
3. Toolbox Talks/Meeting Ice Breakers: Use “Get Outside” as the topic of your next toolbox talk or meeting icebreaker! Encourage employees to share their favorite parks, trails, outdoors activities, etc.
4. Social Media: Help promote #GetOutside on your company’s social media platforms and ask employees to do the same! This will also help encourage their friends & family to spend more time outdoors.

Environment, Culture or Policy Related:

1. Create welcoming outdoor spaces with patio furniture and access to Wi-Fi
2. Host meetings outside on a nice day
3. Encourage employees to go outside on break
4. Conduct outdoor team building activities
5. Allow employees to start a walking club for a lunch break meetup
6. Invite your local parks & rec dept to speak to employees and share about their parks & programs

For more information on why your company should encourage employees to spend more time outdoors, check out the articles below:

• 5 Data-Backed Ways Working Outdoors Can Improve Employee Well-Being – Forbes.com. “Connecting with nature is essential to our well-being and our ability to be productive. Incorporating elements of nature into work environments can reduce stress, enhance creativity and increase productivity.”
• How the Great Outdoors Can Increase Your Productivity – Inc.com. “Our findings suggest that engaging in these green microbreaks–taking time to look at nature through the window, on a walk outside, or even on a screen saver–can be really helpful for improving attention and performance in the workplace“.
• Reducing Stress by Bringing the Outdoors into the Office – Undercover Recruiter. “Incorporating direct or indirect elements of nature into the workplace were found to reduce stress, blood pressure levels, and heart rates while increasing productivity and creativity.”
• Why you should Encourage your Staff to go Outside – Staff Squared. “Whichever way you encourage your staff to spend more time outside, the knock-on effects it’ll have on your business will be positive ones: happier, healthier and more productive staff can only be a step on the right direction”.
• How Walking Meetings Can Unlock Your Creativity at Work – Thrive Global. “Scheduling a walking meeting exposes you to new environmental stimuli outside your usual working setup that can help recontextualize the problem you’ve been grappling with, and may just spark the new idea or insight you need to move a project forward.”

Click here to learn about more benefits of getting outside.