August 26, 2020Pharmacy exercise team, ‘Pharmily’, has won the inaugural Northern Health’s 15 Minute Exercise Challenge, receiving a $50 Rebel Sport voucher for each team member and the 15 Minute Challenge Cup.
The 15 Minute Exercise Challenge was a six-week online team competition which encouraged participants to be active every day and to form good exercise habits. The challenge started on Monday, 22 June, and resulted in 350 individual participants and 50 active teams exercising from all campuses.
Praseetha Koyadan Chathoth, pharmacy technician and the captain of ‘Pharmily,’ said they saw the promo on the Intranet and decided to join the challenge as a group, as many of them were already very active and keeping fit during the pandemic.
“In these tough times, exercise is of the best things to do. With some of us already dieting and exercising, it made sense to do this challenge as a group,” she explained.
At the start, the team realised it was a real challenge to stay committed and find those 15 minutes every day, but they worked diligently to make it part of their routines.
“Everyone did different exercises – like boxing, dancing, bush walking, yoga and similar. Even more staff wanted to join us, but our group was full, we couldn’t take any more people,” she said.
“I am really thankful that this was organised. We didn’t really expect to win, we took it as a fun activity. Winning was a really nice surprise,” she added.
The second place winners were ‘Pastoral Gym Junkies’ and third place winners were ‘Community-Fit Team’.
Other challenge awards included: Star Performer Award, which went to Danika Arney from team ‘The pOTentials’, Self Improvement Award went to David Paterson from team ‘Pastoral Gym Junkies’ and Profile of the Week Award to John Ferguson from team ‘Beauties and Beasts’.
The organisation-wide effort was evident when all the results came through – there were also four more teams: ‘Let’s get Fiscal’, ‘The Transformers’, ‘The pOTentials’ and ‘U70.8’ which scored above 90 per cent participation, an extraordinary effort.
Alison O’Sullivan, Workplace Wellbeing Coordinator, added that the idea for the challenge came from feedback received at last year’s Ideas Lab, where the need for a physical wellbeing initiative became apparent.
“The OHS and Wellbeing team were excited to be able to bring the 15 Minute Exercise Challenge to Northern Health. The challenge was a great way to encourage staff to stay fit and healthy, but also had fantastic benefits including team building and maintaining social connections. We hope staff continue to make exercise an important part of their self care routine – the benefits are proven in the literature regarding the impact on a person’s overall wellbeing and health,” she said.
“Thank you to all staff for their enthusiasm and involvement and congratulations to all the winners,” she added.
Featured image: Suzanna Tan and Praseetha Koyadan Chathoth
