Paris June 9th 2021- Sport Heroes wants its employees to flourish at work so the connected sport and wellness start-up has built its HR strategy around workplace wellness.
"We design our digital experiences to make everyone feel better, so wellness is a key part of what we do. It's only natural that we want to take care of our employees, it's something that really matters to us", Paul-Emile Saab, CEO of Sport Heroes.
To this end, the company has implemented a strategy based on several initiatives. Let's take a look at the variety of complimentary solutions.
Remote working already existed in the company pre-Covid but it really took off during lockdown. Some employees have moved outside the city and the company supports them by requesting at least 1 monthly return trip to the Paris office. The premises have also been redesigned to provide a "flex office" to adapt to new working practices such as agility, collaboration and project mode.
«We are the first to test our United Heroes app and we firmly believe in its benefits, we're its biggest fans », underlines the CEO.
With this in mind, the company regularly hosts challenges on its United Heroes app (sport and wellbeing programme for companies) and encourages staff to get involved with bonus points and rewards up for grabs.
For example, the team Olympics will be held throughout June with individual challenges, online workouts and prizes to win. Weekly videos, short biographies and quizzes put the spotlight on different sports and Olympic athletes. Articles about different employees will be available in the in-house magazine and on the app to put the spotlight on specific profiles or new recruits.
With fitness ever on the agenda, commuting has been given a Sport Heroes spin with a cycle to work scheme. The company's Paris premises have been kitted out with showers, bike racks and cloakrooms so staff have everything they need to work out at work. Yoga mats are also available.
“It's not unusual to be asked out on a run or to play a round of basketball at lunchtime on our in-house Slack messenger or even see colleagues walk past in their sportswear… it's part of our DNA and we love that!” smiles Paul-Emile Saab. He adds: “we encourage our staff to indulge their passion for sport, just like the ultra-trail runner Jodie Gauld who actually appeared in the award-winning Running The Roof documentaryRunning The Roof documentary”.
All employees are asked to attend quarterly business review meetings which present the objectives that have been set for the following quarter. A member of management presents the company's news every Tuesday morning and Sport Heroes employees share their success stories with all the staff every month.
A 30 minute conference call is held every Thursday with the CEO and 5 randomly selected employees to maintain bonds with the teams. Objectives: gather feedback from in the field and get teams involved in making strategic decisions for the company.
To encourage staff from different teams to get to know each other, especially whilst remote working, the company uses a bot to randomly pair 2 people from Sport Heroes and invite them to have a break or lunch together. The company has also launched an innovation day for tech teams which involves spending an entire day working on a leading innovation for Sport Heroes. Last but not least, a two-part seminar is held every six months: one part devoted to work and the other to sport (introduction to Olympic sports at INSEP, curling, waterskiing etc.).
« Every year we work with the works council on new initiatives to better meet the needs of our staff. Our HR strategy not only helps us attract new talent but also secure staff loyalty », says Paul-Emile Saab.
Knowing the positive impact of exercise on mental health and society, Sport Heroes is here to motivate everyone to be active everyday.
So the start-up launched a platform to enable over 300 partners (brands, event planners, NGOs, companies) to engage their community of clients, colleagues or fans through connected sport and wellness.
Sport Heroes has been around since 2014, has 1.7M users in over 150 countries and has a team of 90 passionate consultants based in Paris, London Madrid and Sydney. Sport Heroes has been committed to protecting the environment since 2019 and donates 1% of its turnover to the WWF as part of 1% for the Planet.
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