Valérie Girard is Director of Human Resources at the Ordre des CPA du Québec. We met him to discuss health and hosting virtual sporting events in his organization.
This fall, you participated in the Corporate Challenge 42 days. Where did you get the idea to participate?
“We had been thinking for a few years that we were going to participate in a sporting activity. When we announced that we would stay home all fall, we decided to give ourselves a physical challenge to prevent injuries and promote well-being. ”
Why did you choose the Corporate Challenge 42 days in particular?
“Because it was easy and accessible to everyone. We wanted employees to develop good habits. Honestly, 100 minutes a week isn't that much effort for a lot of results.
The duration is also interesting; 6 weeks is just enough to set up new habits! ”
organize a Corporate Challenge in a virtual way, it represents challenges. What were your successes in your participation?
“Since last March, we communicate a lot with our employees. We send emails through our President every week. It was therefore easy to publish the Challenge by this means.
We also oversaw a launch activity organized by one of our employees who is a coach.
In addition, we created a Facebook group to participate in the Challenge in which people posted their workouts. It was really interesting; we discovered activities that we didn't even know our colleagues were doing.
We also offered a variety of classes at different times of the day to facilitate participation in physical activities.
Finally, we organized a closing activity in which we all dressed in fluorescent! ”
Is the Corporate Challenge allowed you to better take the pulse of your employees?
“Yes, but in general, we are really close to our employees. Managers have small teams. Specifically, some mentioned that the Challenge really made a difference in their lives. It really met our needs! ”
What was more difficult?
“Motivation for online courses has waned over time. It's easy to lose habits. We tried to mobilize people and stimulate this participation when we noticed this decrease. ”
If you had to advise a business participating in the 42 Day Business Challenge, what advice would you give them?
“The Défi Entreprises, like any project, must be supported by management. The initiative can come from anywhere but it takes the commitment of the management. If only the President who takes a picture of herself during her walk.
You have to be aware that it takes time; you have to invest this time to reap the benefits. ”
How the Défi Entreprises fits into your health promotion in company?
“We have been working on work-family balance for years; we had the Concilivi certification in this sense, but we lacked the angle of physical activity.
We also knew that we had athletes in the organization but it was not them that we were targeting. Given the popular success of the 42-Day Business Challenge, we decided to continue the physical activity classes at lunchtime! ”
You had 100 participants out of 200 employees at this virtual sporting event. What was your departure expectation?
“Honestly, never so much! We know that people have lots of obligations so we had no expectations.
We expected to engage about a third of our employees. We are really happy to have had more participants and that they also participated more well by entering more minutes of physical activity. ”
Is the teleworking will continue beyond the pandemic?
“When we set up our teleworking policy, we had already granted one day of telework, which was the norm at the time.
Obviously, it will have to increase following the pandemic but it will not be 100%. We will want to continue to see our employees, but not 100% at work, nor 100% at home. We will present it next week so that everyone knows in advance. ”
Your current job must be difficult because you are managing at the same time the very short term and at the same time you have to plan for the post-pandemic. How do you live that?
“We had to put our development projects aside at the start of the year. For me, it's no use working on major development projects now. Rather, we need security, not to feel isolated, etc. ”
It's a bit like Maslow's pyramid; do we take care of the base?
“Right in that! We started in March by saying that no one was going to lose their job, in security. Currently, we are more in the sense of belonging. We bought mugs, hot chocolate, hoodies to promote this feeling. It is certain that people want to develop, but I think that in the short term, we put the major human resources projects aside and we focus on the grassroots. ”
What I remember from this interview is that for a virtual sporting event to be successful, it takes an involved and benevolent direction.
"Very funny that you say that… we like that word a lot, benevolence." By the way, we really enjoyed the Corporate Challenge as well as support. It was easy to embark on a Challenge that was well structured and easy for the organization to deliver. We really enjoyed it! ”
