What makes a wellness event different from a regular team day

Before you look at venues or book speakers, one thing has to be clear. What do you want employees to do differently after this wellness event? That is the objective.

'Living more consciously' is not an objective. 'Employees know which three concrete steps they will take for better sleep quality afterwards': that is one.

Draw a distinction between physical and mental wellbeing. Both are relevant, but they call for different approaches. Physical wellbeing is about movement, nutrition and sleep. Mental wellbeing is about resilience, energy management and workload. You can combine them in one programme, but you have to make a deliberate choice about how to strike the balance.

Involve HR in setting the objective. They know where the absence sits, which themes are live and what has been tried before. A wellness event that connects to an existing HR signal is more effective than one that arrives out of nowhere.

Mind your audience within the organisation. A wellness event for people who already exercise regularly calls for a different format than a programme for a sedentary department. Segment where needed. A programme designed for everyone a little bit lands with no one in particular.

Organising a wellness event can be done in dozens of ways. The most effective formats are those in which participants are active themselves: not passively listening to a speaker, but joining in.

These are popular formats:

• Workshops with experts: a dietitian, sleep coach or mindfulness trainer. Keep each workshop to a maximum of thirty minutes. Run several sessions in parallel so people choose for themselves.
• Outdoor programme: walking, cycling, yoga in the open air. Movement in nature demonstrably lowers stress levels. Keep the barrier low: not everyone wants to run hard.
• Measurement and personal insight: a short health check (blood pressure, fitness, sleep rhythm) gives participants concrete insight. Anyone who knows where they stand is more motivated to change something.
• Nutrition and cooking demo: practical, low-barrier and immediately applicable. Works well as the closing piece of a wellness day.

Always combine active sections with moments of reflection. A day that is only active is exhausting. Build in deliberate breaks, ideally outdoors.

We recommend a maximum of five hours of programme for a wellness event. Longer than that and energy dips. Shorter than three hours and it feels too fleeting. Four hours is the ideal length.

The venue choice has a direct effect on the outcome. At the office, people stay mentally in office mode. Off-site, they step out of it physically as well.

Choose a venue in nature if you can. An estate, outdoor centre or park works better than a conference hotel. Nature lowers stress hormones. That is exactly the effect you want.

These are the criteria for a good wellness venue:

• Space for both indoor and outdoor activities (the Netherlands, rain)
• Enough changing rooms and toilets for movement activities
• Catering that matches the theme: healthy, fresh, no heavy lunch that makes people drowsy (use the Voedingscentrum guidelines for a healthy lunch as the basis for the menu)
• Accessible by public transport and by car

Hosting it on your own grounds can also work, if you have a large office or outdoor space. Upside: no travel time, lower costs. Downside: employees are never mentally fully away from work. In that case create a clear physical boundary. Use rooms other than the regular meeting rooms and close the building for the day.

We know venues across the Netherlands that are specifically suited to wellness programmes. We search on your behalf and negotiate the price for you.

A wellness event for fifty employees costs between 3,000 and 10,000 euros on average. Within that range there are big differences:

• Half-day workshop at the office with one expert: 1,500 to 3,000 euros
• Full day at an external venue with multiple workshops and catering: 5,000 to 10,000 euros
• Multi-day wellness retreat with overnight stay: 15,000 euros and up

Check whether the budget is available through the staff budget, occupational health policy or the prevention budget of your health insurer. Some insurers partially cover wellbeing interventions. Ask your insurer: it can save you thousands of euros.

On planning: for a wellness event up to a hundred people, start eight weeks ahead if you can. Popular external experts are booked four to six weeks out. Venues are sometimes booked months ahead.

Tie the date to an HR moment: the start of the year, a period after a busy project run, or stress-awareness week. That increases both relevance and turnout.

Want to build a solid budget for your wellness event? Read our overview of cost items for business events → for a complete picture of what to include.

Organising a wellness event takes more time than most HR managers expect. Not the thinking-up: that part is quick. But the execution: comparing venues, briefing experts, coordinating catering, building the run sheet, arranging communications.

We take that off your hands. We know the right experts in sleep, nutrition, movement and mental resilience. We know which venues work for this type of programme. And we make sure you can join in on the day itself instead of standing around fixing things.

At Live Impact we do not work with fixed packages. We start with your objective. From there we build a wellness event that fits your people, your culture and your budget. From concept to post-event evaluation.

We work for organisations from twenty up to a thousand employees. From one-off wellness days to annual programmes that form part of a broader sustainable employability policy. Want to know more about keeping employees engaged after the event? Read our article on employee engagement through events →.

Organising a wellness event starts with one conversation: not a quote or a package menu, but a conversation about your people and what is going on in the organisation.

We ask the right questions. We look into where the absence sits and which themes are alive in the team. We also look at what has been tried before without results. From those questions we build a programme that lands.

We know the venues and the experts. We know how to organise a day that stays with people, not because it went well, but because it changed something.

Get in touch via hello@live-impact.nl or call us on 085 401 40 14. Or fill in the brief on our website. Then we will know exactly where we stand.

Seriously fun.