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Employee Health Fair Ideas To Make Your Event A Great One

6 min read
Published on 05 May, 2019

Are you concerned about the health and wellness of your employees? If you are, you might be thinking of planning a wellness event for your company. Organizing a health fair is a great way to promote awareness about employee health and initiate wellness programs and challenges. It shows the concern you have for the well-being of your employees.

A successful health fair benefits both the company and its employees. It gives you a chance to change employee behavior and make them commit to healthy lifestyles. It creates opportunities to provide benefits to your employees, such as health screenings, learning ways to be healthier, networking opportunities, etc.

The Planning Process

When organizing a health fair, having a great plan is very important. You can choose to plan out things on your own or use a ready-made checklist. Either way, here are some things you have to take care of -

(a) Determining your budget

Decide how much money you are going to invest in the health fair. Reach out to sponsors, to help pay for the event. By involving sponsors you can promote community involvement and create networking opportunities for your employees.

(b) Setting goals and deciding the things and services to include

Clearly define the goals and objectives for your event. Doing so will help provide your employees with meaningful information and resources to help them make changes in their lives.

You must also decide the things you want your health fair to have. Things like staffed health screening stations, healthy food vendors, safety resources, wellness experts, fitness experts, etc., are essential. You can also opt to have massage chairs, supplement vendors, chiropractors, dieticians, healthy cooking demos, etc.

Most importantly, don’t forget the things which are necessary such as -

  • Electricity and electronic equipment
  • Restrooms
  • Speakers, Microphones
  • Advertisement Banners
  • Garbage Bins

(c) Choosing the date and location

After deciding the budget and the things you want to include, it’s time to choose the location and the date.

Choose a location according to your budget. If you are short on money, you can organize your event in your company parking lot, a community hall, park, etc.

For the date, choose one when there are no holidays or scheduled events.

Now that you have learned the essential things to take care of, here are some great ideas to throw a successful health fair for your employees -

Create a theme

Health fairs with a particular theme are more entertaining, fun, and exciting. They can incite employee interest and participation.

Choose themes for your event, such as a fitness-oriented or nutrition-oriented health fair. Doing so will help you market and promote your health fair. Moreover, it will help you focus on the activities you want to include.

Some health fair themes ideas are -

  • Heart health theme
  • Diabetes and obesity theme
  • Thanksgiving theme
  • New Year theme
  • Race to wellness
  • Rock’n’Roll Health fair

Choose vendors for your event.

Choosing quality vendors is one of the most critical aspects of health fair planning. A health fair without vendors is not possible. If there aren’t vendors which interest employees, it will be hard to get them to attend the event.

Select the types of vendors you want and invite them to your health fair. While most vendors will be willing to participate in your event, some may need to be convinced to participate.

While local gyms, health food outlets, health insurance companies, etc., are the most obvious choices of vendors to invite to a health fair, massage therapists, bike shops, dieticians, meditation experts, etc., are also worth inviting.

Offer gifts to participants.

Free health-related gifts or gifts that support your health fair's theme are a fantastic way to motivate employees. They are the best way to draw employees in and increase participation.

Ask the vendors in your event if they can give away samples or gifts for employee participation. You can also provide participants with raffle tickets that can be used to take part in raffle drawings, allowing each participant equal chances to win.

Here are some examples of freebies and goodies you can give your employees -

  • Personal Health Books
  • Free massages
  • Coupons for free nutritious meals
  • Gym essentials
  • Stress Balls
  • Water bottles
  • Free personal training sessions
  • Sports equipment

Appreciate and Reward your Employees

An event such as a health fair is a perfect place to appreciate, encourage, and reward employees for their participation in wellness initiatives and challenges.

Offer free lunch to your staff or give them prizes to show your appreciation for their participation and dedication. Hold award-giving ceremonies to appreciate and honor employees for their achievements and contributions.

Provide informational lessons and hands-on demos

The main motive of a health fair is to promote health awareness and get employees involved.

Hands-on demonstrations and educational lessons are great at promoting and enhancing awareness among employees.

Invite health professionals and experts to provide on-site screenings and interactive demos to educate and engage employees.

Here are some ideas -

  • A CPR crash course
  • Self-defense technique demonstration
  • Yoga lessons
  • Healthy cooking demos
  • Proper exercise and weight lifting form demonstration
  • Emergency Situation Preparedness
  • Demonstrating proper posture and ergonomics
  • First Aid demo
  • Free Health Screenings

Create wellness challenges and company health initiatives

A health fair is a perfect place to start wellness challenges for your employees. Wellness challenges are one of the best ways to adopt healthy habits while having fun at the same time.

You can create a fitness challenge, a water drinking challenge, or even a smoking cessation challenge. Health fair activity ideas are endless, and so are their benefits.

Here is a comprehensive guide on wellness challenges to assist you in creating motivational and entertaining contests for your company.

Promote your event as much as you can

Promoting your event as much as you can in every way possible will help you to get many employees to participate and engage in it. A health fair gives you an excellent opportunity to showcase the perks you offer your employees.

Promote the event to all your company’s communication channels and announce the perks of attending it. Use every medium available to promote your health fair.

Some great ideas are -

  • Emails
  • Ads in Company websites
  • Social media sites like Linkedin, Twitter, etc.
  • Newsletters
  • Fliers, signs, and posters
  • Slack messaging
  • Spreading the word from mouth to mouth
  • Bulletin Boards
  • Intranet Postings

Make participation an excellent time for the participants.

Even though your health fair is a company event, encourage your employees to leave work at the workplace when they attend it. If your company is massive, make sure that you organize the event when every employee can attend it. Also, remember to take steps to make your participants feel appreciated and make them have a great time.

Here are some ways to do that -

  • Greet and direct your vendors and sponsors when they arrive, and introduce them to your employees

  • Conduct little events to start the ceremony like cutting a ribbon, tossing confetti, cutting a cake, etc.

  • Hold raffle contests with lucrative rewards such as paid leaves, free paid trips, electronic gadgets, etc.

  • Create activities and challenges for your employees to introduce them to wellness, such as a quiz on healthy eating, etc.

  • Give employees tickets for visiting each booth and participating in activities. Give out prizes to the ones with the most tickets.

Make the waiting period a fun time.

Most probably, there are going to be lines at your booths and stalls. Make sure employees are entertained during the waiting period.

  • Invite massage therapists to provide hand massages for your employees while they wait.

  • Set up two or three video screens around the booths, which play informational demos and instructional videos on health and wellness.

  • Invite a photographer or select a volunteer to use fun props and take photographs of people.

  • Invite a healthy food vendor and ask them to provide samples of healthy foods to employees waiting in line.

Make the final touches.

After the event is over, follow up with actions to make sure the participants had a memorable time at the event.

Here are some things to help you with that -

  • Call or meet vendors and sponsors in person and thank them for their participation. Send them gifts of gratitude.

  • Send physical or digital surveys to employees to know if they found the event worthwhile and if they would attend another one.

  • Send different surveys to vendors to know if they liked participating and if they would do it again.

  • Ask your participants to provide feedback on the event and what they would like to incorporate in a future event.

  • Remind your employees with tips to stay healthy and to maintain healthy habits they adopted in the event.

So now that you know the things to keep in mind while organizing a health fair go ahead and throw one for your company to promote health among your employees.

Besides working as a content marketer at Vantage Circle, Shah Alif Ahmed is also an internationally certified nutrition specialist, competitive bodybuilder and a musician. For any queries reach out to editor@vantagecircle.com

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