Healthwise Global, an initiative of Flight Centre, has grown to become a leading corporate wellness provider around the world. Its goal is to provide corporate wellness programs that are both fun and flexible, helping to create a healthy culture of focused, driven people in the workplace. Tod Horton, business leader in the health and wellness industry, has been at the forefront of Healthwise since its beginnings in 2000, a testament to its sustainability and continuous innovation.

A country boy, Tod was born and raised in Kingaroy, Queensland. He enjoyed growing up in a place with a strong sense of mateship where everyone knew one another. He also grew up playing plenty of sports, from footy to swimming, which led to him completing the first offering of a Bachelor of Health Science with a major in health fitness and sports management at Griffith University.

After completing his degree, he began working for Golden Door, a leading health retreat in Australia, as a health professional. He wrote programs, ran activities, and provided education to give people the tools to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

It was through Golden Door that he met Graham “Skroo” and Jude Turner, founders of Flight Centre Travel Group. Like Tod, Skroo enjoys sports and endurance events and has participated in marathons, touch footy, mountain biking and more (all while establishing his global empire!). Impressively, Tod has competed in a number of grueling long-distance Ironman triathlons. This was the beginning of a great friendship.

Skroo invited Tod to present at their Global SWOT conference in Canada. It was a great opportunity for him to meet with hard-working, top leaders from around the world. There, he ran a health program that provided education, activities, and seminars, with exercise plans tailored to participants.

Over the years, he has also had the opportunity to attend a number of Flight Centre’s annual Global Gathering events.

“Flight Centre hosts Global Gatherings, offering reward and recognition for the amazing work that consultants and support staff do in the company across all their brands and countries. Each year, everyone comes together in a different destination.”

Keynote speakers at these events have included big names such as Chris Hemsworth, Kylie Minogue, Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr, Bill Clinton, Michael J Fox, Lance Armstrong, and even a performance by Shaggy.

“Where can I sign up for a job?” joked Trace.

Flight Centre had launched Moneywise a few years previously, a program to assist their staff with finance and budgeting, “To keep them more focused and productive, and as an attraction tool.” They decided to launch Healthwise to better look after the holistic health and wellbeing of staff.

“It’s stood the test of time,” said Trace. “You’re still there, so it has to be engaging and paying off.”

After 18 years, Healthwise is now located in 23 different countries with 300 staff. Tod credits having the backing of an incredible company, Flight Centre, and the support of their leadership for the organisation’s success. Flight Centre cares deeply about its people and investing in leadership.

“It starts with good relationships, ethics and the belief to be a good person to ensure you have people’s trust.”

Tod launched Healthwise in Australia, attending different Flight Centre retail locations, conducting full consultations to assess people’s physical fitness, nutrition, emotional wellbeing, and stress management, setting them up with a follow-up plan.

“Every Flight Centre staff member had the opportunity to connect with bio-testing and physical testing, at no cost to them.”

Healthwise grew exponentially, spreading to New Zealand, the UK, South Africa, Canada, and America, and is still growing, recently establishing itself in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Tod credits their smart business model, getting the right people in leadership roles, and being market leaders providing innovative plans and structures.

“This was the best thing for attraction (getting the best people to join the organisation), productivity and retention.”

Tod spends time with leaders to ensure they have the knowledge to grow their teams, and be amazing, inspirational people that others would follow. He also enjoys gaining ideas and feedback from them.

“Every month [Flight Centre] has buzz nights, which provide reward and recognition for all different areas of the businesses. So they drink and do shots, and have lots of fun, and they also balance it out with Healthwise activities.

“Every Christmas, it is now a global tradition for Flight Centre to have a giant Slip ‘N Slide with inflatable bowling pins. We even had a Slip ‘N Slide in the carpark of the Sheraton in Berlin!”

Tod believes Flight Centre is an amazing company because their global leaders are so inspirational. The leadership team share values of health and wellbeing, and this filters down throughout the business.

“The DNA and philosophy of Flight Centre is distilled within their leaders. Their number one philosophy is their people. They not only offer health and wellness through Healthwise, but other different educational components such as Moneywise and Travelwise, and they are bringing on Parentwise and Womanwise. It’s amazing how the company has evolved.”

Skroo’s sense of fun and play is injected into every part of the business. For example, their head office has two slippery slides and posters with unique sayings on the walls.

“They believe in their people so much and invest in them.”

“It sounds like they really value developing their leaders,” said Trace. “It makes sense. You put into the people, they put back into your company and you make a profit. A lot of companies forget that and just focus on the money side of things. People drive your business.”

Healthwise have won many awards throughout Australia, and recently achieved a top place in the Global Healthy Workplace Award. They are constantly offering discounted products and ensuring they are reporting and comparing data, country to country, and state to state. Healthwise runs challenges for teams and individuals, and all staff have incentives.

“Corporations usually stand at about 24% engagement of their staff,” said Trace. “The last engagement survey Flight Centre did, due to the Healthwise impact, it sat at 82%. That is such a testament to what you’re doing with Healthwise and keeping people engaged. It’s not about it just being a job where you get paid; it’s a culture where people feel valued, it’s their family, their home. How many people can say that about where they work?”

“I’ve never ever not wanted to go to work. That’s been the way throughout my whole life, but from this job in particular. We have such impact and opportunity to help change peoples’ lives.”

Tod expressed gratitude that Healthwise has brought people together, “giving them the energy to spend time with family and friends, and wake up each day jumping for joy at coming to work.”

Flight Centre also launched Flight Centre Sports and Events, providing full packages and training plans for people interested in sports and events travel. Skroo and Jude also sponsor many athletes, some of which have become world champions. This year, they are sponsoring 76 athletes across a range of sports.

“It’s been a hard slog for 18 years,” said Trace. “You’ve built Healthwise and gone on to create Flight Centre Sports and Events. You’ve done it with integrity, with gumption. You must be so very proud.”

“I am so lucky I have the best team of people who are so passionate, so smart and driven. Most of our team has been with Healthwise for more than 15 years. It’s amazing coming in to work every day and loving your job. These people have moved countries, they’ve set up businesses, I can’t thank them enough for the energy and passion that they’ve put in.”

“I hope I’m still here in 20 years time with this business, seeing the team that we’ve developed having such success. I can’t wait for the next global conference.”

Tod currently resides in Queensland with his wife Sue, and their two sons.

Source

Talk with Trace

Tracey Thomas

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Motorama is one of Queensland’s most iconic privately-owned car dealerships with a vision to create customers for life. They have a number of initiatives in place to make that happen, one of which is positively engaging with every customer. From salespeople, car washers, mechanics, and administrators, every member of staff is responsible for smiling, making eye contact, asking customers open questions, and having a “can do” attitude.

“We’re big on customer service and making sure our customers are happy,” said Damian.

Damian describes Motorama work culture as staff living company values. Every second month is themed with a value, and dealerships try to make it visual and inclusive for their customers.

“For example, in June, the value we wanted to focus on was ‘team work’,” said Damian. “So we created initiatives and team goals, celebrating with barbeques. Different dealerships hosted different events and embraced the culture.”

In August, Motorama promoted “be green month”, where they cleaned up around their worksites and reinvigorated their recycling efforts.

Damian explained the importance of how Motorama’s people help them achieve their shared vision of creating customers for life. They invest in their people. Their Future Leaders program enables anyone with aspirations in improving their career to learn and progress. They also offer training, certificates, and diplomas.

“We just try to create a culture of teamwork and having fun. That creates a great environment where people love coming to work, and this rubs off on our customers. Everyone’s having a good time!”

A colleague of Damian’s presented the idea of participating in Tour de Office a few years ago. The charitable initiative provides stationary bikes to organisations as part of an annual week-long event, making it easy for staff to participate and raise money for their chosen charity. Motorama will conduct their Tour de Office event in October, which fits perfectly with their value theme for the month, “have fun”.

“For us it was a real winner because we love to support charity and Tour de Office has become the best vehicles – or bikes – to make that happen!”

Each member of staff takes a turn to ride and compete. Damian prefers Tour de Office’s interoffice relay event in comparison to other forms of fundraising, such as doing the Brisbane-to-Gold Coast ride or selling raffle tickets, which only seem to suit certain people. Since starting the annual event a few years ago, Motorama hasn’t looked back.

Tour de Office enables companies to choose their own charities, and Motorama has selected the Starlight Foundation.

“The Starlight Foundation has been a great, easy charity for everyone to connect with. The work they do to brighten the lives of sick kids and their families, who have such a tough time, is so impressive. It’s very inclusive. They invite us into their rooms and show us their work. They do such an excellent job.”

Damian explains how Tour de Office allows Motorama to fulfil its corporate philanthropic goals, and also engage their people.

“Tour de Office has been a winner from day one! Having the bike there creates this party atmosphere. We make it part of breakfast, lunch, or afternoon tea, with music and food. There’s someone on the bike and people encouraging them. It’s a team event and competition. All these elements make it such a fun time. Because one of our values is having fun, it’s just been perfect for us.”

Sitting down all day is not conducive to health, so the more Motorama can get people moving, the better. That message is always growing within the organisation. They have primarily been focused on charitable and philanthropic work, so the health benefits of Tour de Office are simply an added benefit.

“Being able to do something during work hours is a privilege. For our senior managers, it’s kudos to them to say we’re allowed to do something like this. It’s great they allow us to do that and feel good about ourselves.”

Motorama staff are focused on having fun at the event, taking pictures of staff dressed up and having a good time. The content has been excellent in terms of their employer branding, as they’ve used it on their Facebook page, and in blogs and forums, and received a lot of great engagement with both customers and potential candidates.

Tour de Office appeals to a wide audience, so for potential candidates to see pictures on the Motorama blog and website of staff having fun and raising money is highly beneficial in their talent attraction efforts.

Damian is particularly proud of their place on the Tour de Office website.

“There are a lot of big company names, so it is great to see Motorama among them as an organisation who cares about the community and having fun.”

Does your organisation conduct activities to engage customers, staff, and potential candidates? Tell us in the comments or get in touch with us to feature your story.

The post Exclusive: Motorama’s focus on FUN attracts the best people appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Established in 2011, Tour de Office creatively combines corporate wellness with philanthropy. To date, they have raised close to a million dollars for various Australian charities. Their unique offering is an in-office relay event whereby up to 80 employees cycle in back-to-back shifts for one week. Employees compete, engage and raise money for their charity of choice, with Tour de Office supplying the bikes and organising volunteers to manage the event.

The events are flexible in that they can work for organisations that are any size, at any level of development. How it is implemented will depend on a company’s goals and purpose. They are a lean organisation, so 90% of funds raised goes directly to charity.

“Organisations that choose to engage Tour de Office usually do so for three main reasons,” says Helen. “As a wellness initiative, as part of their corporate giving responsibilities, or as a customer and community engagement event.”

Typically, larger organisations of more than 80 people use the opportunity as a wellness initiative, raising awareness about health risks for office workers. Those who sit for more than four hours per day are at greater risk for chronic disease, regardless of how much exercise they undertake.

A large body of evidence demonstrates the value of exercise for worker productivity, and Helen has seen these benefits firsthand. She enjoys seeing the satisfaction when people hop off the bike and return to work energised and excited.

“Staff love that the event is conducted within working hours in an office environment. Employers show they really care about wellness and investing in their staff.”

Year on year, organisations continue to see return on investment through a healthier, more engaged workforce. It’s no wonder that hosts often return annually and expand their involvement.

Aside from these incredible benefits, Tour de Office is also a great opportunity to capitalise on employer branding. Because the event is so different and fosters such active engagement, people naturally share their experiences with their networks online.

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“Friends of participants are always asking how to get involved or saying they wished they worked there!”

Through promoting and sharing experiences from this event, hosts demonstrate that a commitment to staff, health and charitable giving is part of company culture.

“An organisation that does this really well is Coronis,” says Helen. “They have a strong social media presence and during Tour de Office week, they are very diligent in promoting and sharing it. This enables them to demonstrate their commitment to both corporate wellness and philanthropy.”

Helen would like to see other organisations capitalising from this engagement in a more structured manner, for example through social channels, website copy and in job advertisements.

Another exciting aspect is volunteer involvement. One volunteer reports receiving several job offers from an organisation where she spent the week. This is a unique recruitment marketing strategy in itself, as organisations can tap into a totally new talent source.

“Through cultivating employee engagement, relationships, social sharing, health, well-being, and corporate philanthropy, all with the simplicity of an off-the-shelf event, Tour de Office is such a solid investment.”

To get involved, contact Helen directly at Helen@tourdeoffice.com or on 0429 347 417.

For more information and pricing, visit the Tour de Office website.

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