Padre Dam Municipal Water District provides services to approximately 100,000 residents in East San Diego County in California. They’ve been using the Jostle platform for many years to connect their onsite, offsite, and satellite office staff. And back in 2016, they even won a Jostle Award for Employee Engagement for a campaign they ran to encourage honest and open communication throughout their organization, from the field workers right up to the General Manager, (you can read about that here). 

Five years ago, their Health and Safety Manager, Larry Costello, started a wellness program for all staff called PadreFIT! Each year-long cycle of the program focuses on various aspects of wellness, including physical, mental, and fiscal. Here is how Larry used their Jostle platform to create a fun and engaging wellness program:

• Each month of PadreFIT! brings a new theme. The more months you participate, the more prize draws you’re entered in (and occasionally there are smaller prizes each month). A News article is posted to announce the opening of the program and provide employees with an Activity Passport to keep track of themes for each of the coming months. The team from Padre Dam was kind enough to share a peek at this year's passport with us:

• At the beginning of the month, a News article is published (highlighted with the Feature in Banner option) about the challenge. Past challenges have included getting a good night’s sleep, drinking enough water, reading for personal enjoyment, and getting your office space organized. They’ve even had a zombie walk challenge! For some of the challenges there is a scorecard attached for employees to download and send back to Larry at the end of the month. For example, challenges like drinking enough water require employees to drink 64 oz of water a day for at least 20 days in the month.
• Staff are encouraged to post photos of their progress to the Activity feed throughout each month’s challenge (in fact, some of the challenges require it). This adds celebration and camaraderie to their Jostle platform over the year, not to mention reminders to other employees to complete the challenges.

Each year, the PadreFIT! campaign helps them inject fun into their Jostle platform, and their employees love getting creative with their posts, receiving encouragement in their challenges, and getting healthy together.