HeiaHeia, the Finnish originated service to help those exercising keep track of their developement, has announced the launch of their corporate white label service. The corporate version leverages features from the current service, but will be sold to clients through a SaaS-model. The launch of the corporate version will have no effect on the consumer service and it will stay free in the future as well, according to a blog post by HeiaHeia.

HeiaHeia tested the corporate concept with four companies from different industries; environmental consulting, IT, retail/logistics and the public sector. According to the pilots, the approach of the service appeals to the users and most importantly, the community cheering and motivating does work in an corporate environment too. In one of the pilot companies, 90% of activated users logged their activities and contributed to common goals and cheered each other.

HeiaHeia also commented that the amount of physical activity per week per person has grown and the top sports in the pilot company mentioned above were casual, like walking, etc. Indeed, HeiaHeia's approach to make even the smallest physical activities count towards the goals is an easy step for those among us who do not exercise on constant basis. Therefore taking the first steps in the form of logging yourself walking to work are an easy way to get started.

This is an interesting direction for the company to go into, but it does show through its pilots that there might be an untapped market out there. From the corporate side, this is an interesting metric into the well being of your employees as well - how much are they actually exercising and are those free gym hours really worth it? Having these kind of metrics available to the management should be of great interest into actually understanding how good in a shape your employees are in.

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Jussi Räisänen February 25, 2011

Just thought to give a few more insights into this topic -- as was mentioned in the post the activation rates have been phenomenal compared to many other corporate wellness initiatives.

In one particular pilot organisation we not only experienced a 92% activation rate but also observed a 27% increase in average weekly activity among 600+ employees over a period of one month. We also consistently saw that over 80% of the most popular activities were free - i.e. activities that don't require paying admission or subscription such as e.g. gyms.

HeiaHeia complements many of today's corporate wellness initiatives - campaigns, activity days, coaching services - it is a service that is meant to stick and evolve with the organization. It basically gives a great tool for any HR department to bring corporate wellness online: launch new activating initiatives, communicate objectives and reward employees more fairly than was possible before.

JR