Bonding by relays

Not such a stretch: Doing well in a race is all about team work.

When the Who released their single Relay in 1972, the emphasis was on looking for a solution to the relentless pressure of modern life but when it comes to relay running, many corporate teams are finding that training together towards a common goal can actually provide the sort of relief Roger Daltrey was calling for at the mike.

As human resources adviser to accounting and financial services company WHK Group, Raychel Gage is a strong supporter of integrating regular exercise into the daily routine and not just because of general fitness outcomes.

“There’s a strong culture of work-life balance here and its very popular among the staff because it always does well on the staff engagement surveys,” Gage says. “We are in chairs most of the day and have very sedentary roles so it’s very important to get out there and do more physical activity. It’s just part of our culture.”

To keep people healthy and active, WHK encourages its 3000 employees to commute to work on foot or by bike and to take a break at lunch time and do some physical activity such as walking or running during the day.

With 120 offices in Australia, WHK also encourages individual offices to regularly participate in community sporting and charitable events because of the impact it has on team building, community engagement and office morale.

“Most of our offices are regional and it’s outside the capital cities where it becomes particularly important to get out there and participate in the local community,” Gage says.

The benefits of getting out of the office and doing some physical training with other staff members are manifold, according to Aaron Lean, head coach and sports physiologist with MultiSport Solutions, who regularly works on corporate training programs. While the impact of regular exercise on productivity is well known, he says participation in a team event provides added communication and organisational skills that feed directly back into office morale.

“Doing well in a race is all about communication, team work, playing to everyone’s strengths and building relationships,” Lean says. “If you run together you begin to focus on working with people of a range of abilities; the faster runners can be there to motivate the slower runners but the slower runners also play an important role in terms of taking things easy and not getting overly competitive.”

According to Lean, the ability to see how colleagues work under pressure and how they respond to different stimuli can be very useful off the field because participants become more familiar with their reactions and capabilities.

“Back in the office you begin to be able to see when someone needs to be challenged and when you need to back off and leave them to work on their own,” Lean says.

In fact, when the emphasis is on team work rather than winning at all costs the outcomes can be even greater, as Gage discovered when she participated in a WHK team in the Cancer Council’s Relay for Life in 2010 and again in 2011.

“We didn’t train together because the race itself is more of a walk, you need to keep a baton moving for 24 hours, but we did work together on the fund-raising and in the end everyone in the office was involved either directly in the relay or cooking barbecues on the sidelines.”

While they weren’t in it to win it, Gage says the event has had a lasting impact on the way people work together in the office.

BRW

Comments (0)