Recharging at Verkada: Health and Wellness Month Recap

Health and wellness are an essential part of life and work. The pandemic reinforced employers' need to focus on their employees' overall well-being. This is why Verkada doubled down on employee wellness by launching our inaugural Wellness Month in 2021. After an outstanding response, we were excited to bring back our 2nd Annual Wellness Month this past October. 

This year's month of wellness centered on three main areas of employee wellness: community, accessibility, and education. 

Community:

Studies from the World Health Organization and the Mayo Clinic show that physical activity and a sense of belonging are vital to supporting an individual's mental health. Our VerkadaFit Community is a great way to combine these two things. Through this community, we've brought people together to get active, boost endorphins, and make new connections. 

This Wellness month, the VerkadaFit community hosted a tennis clinic for players of all levels - from those who frequent the court daily to those who have never picked up a tennis racket. The clinic was an excellent opportunity for those looking to pick up tennis to try it out and meet other members of the Verkada team in the process. After a fun afternoon of tennis, we headed to a local restaurant for a quick happy hour with the team. 

Back by popular demand, we incorporated some healthy competition this year with our global step challenge, where teams of six competed against each other to see who could track the most steps over October. Together, we logged 37,009,576 steps! It was great to see people prioritizing moving throughout the day and encouraging each other to do the same. 

Fitness wasn't the only way we fostered a sense of community this month. We also brought people together through community outreach. Verkada Gives hosted a local beach clean-up where members of the Verkada team spent the day picking up trash and debris to help preserve the natural habitat. 

Accessibility:

Providing access to quality health care and resources is one of the ways that we support our employees' overall wellness. We know that life can get busy between work, personal life, and other responsibilities. We tried to relieve some stress by taking one thing off our employee's plates and setting up an onsite vaccination clinic that offered interested employees the bivalent covid booster and the flu vaccine.

In addition to our vaccine clinic, we offered a few other wellness activities around the office, such as massages, green juices, and a guided breathwork class.  

Our commitment to accessibility to proper healthcare extends past our Wellness Month through our robust benefits programs. Comprehensive healthcare coverage, a $10,000 fertility stipend, and access to different meditation and counseling apps are just a few of the benefits that we offer our employees. 

Education and Resources:

We want to empower our employees to make informed decisions about their health and provide them with the resources to do so. This month we held our Health Benefits Open Enrollment for our US based employees. To ensure employees take advantage of their benefits to the fullest extent, we hosted multiple education sessions with our health benefits broker and our primary health care carrier. In addition to the sessions, we also hosted office hours where employees could bring their questions regarding our offerings, and we could help them get set up with a plan that best fits their needs. 

In addition to learning more about our different resources, we also wanted to create opportunities for our team to learn new ways they can care for their health and wellness. This year we took the initiative global and held a breathwork class out of our Sydney office, where Rory Warnock, breathwork specialist, led the group through different scientifically backed breathing techniques that can be used to help relieve stress and anxiety. The team left this seminar with new skills they could apply to their daily routines to maintain a happy and healthy lifestyle.

What’s next 

At Verkada, we are dedicated to creating a work environment where employees can grow and thrive as professionals and individuals. We hope this month not only helped our employees relax and recharge in the moment but also helped shine a light on the various resources and programs we offer so that employees can continue leveraging them and feel their best.