A sports competition designed to promote wellness and build company culture is coming to Chattanooga's Finley Stadium in June with an "adult field day" that organizers hope will draw hundreds of workers competing in more than a dozen sporting events.
Billed as the Corporate Challenge, the program will provide competition in everything from trivia contests to tug-of-war events to encourage workers to engage and network with one another while competing against other businesses in town for the honor of winning the Corporate Challenge belt as the best all-around company. So far, nine area businesses have signed up to participate, including the region's biggest private employer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which is helping sponsor the communitywide competition.
"Our goal at Corporate Challenge is to provide opportunities for local businesses to foster company culture and promote health and wellness," Summer Hall, the culture director and Corporate Challenge team director for Knight Eady, said in an announcement Wednesday of the new venture. "With these goals in mind, there's no better partner to champion this mission with than BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee."
Katie Evers, a spokesperson for the sports marketing company Knight Eady, said the organizers hope to attract at least 20 companies to the program this year and build on the effort in subsequent years.
Knight Eady launched the Corporate Challenge in Birmingham in 2015 to emphasize health and wellness by getting employees up and out of the office to compete in a series of engaging games and challenges. The program was patterned after a similar corporate challenge competition among employers in Indianapolis organized by the Indiana Sports Corp., a nonprofit that has helped organize more than 500 sporting events in central Indiana over the past 25 years.
Employers pay anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000, depending on their size, to join in the competition. Teams will compete in dodgeball, cornhole, cycling, the 40-yard dash, football, basketball, golf, soccer, home run derby, a puzzle pursuit, a hula hoop competition and a fitness walk.
The main event, billed as an "adult field day," will be at Finley Stadium and the First Horizon Pavilion. Leading up to the main event, a trivia challenge is planned, along with a bowling challenge.
Roy Vaughn, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, said Corporate Challenge Chattanooga should help employees with their own fitness, aid businesses with company culture and support the community with a philanthropic component in the competition designed to help Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Chattanooga.
"We're committed to creating and supporting opportunities that emphasize health and wellness for the Chattanooga community, including our hometown employees," Vaughn said in a statement. "We're excited to sponsor this initiative that fosters company culture and promotes well-being by getting people out of the office for engaging games and challenges."
Evers said in Birmingham, the adult field day has grown to include nearly 3,000 workers from employers across central Alabama. The corporate teams formed for different sports help build the company culture and often bring workers together on a company team who work in different parts of the same business.
"It's a great networking and team-building exercise, in addition to promoting healthy activity for employees," she said in a telephone interview. "It's also a lot of fun for everyone."
Evers said team-building programs like Corporate Challenge are increasingly important as more businesses shift to remote or hybrid work schedules and workers come to the office and interact in person less frequently than in the past. The competition offered by Corporate Challenge also helps involve far more workers across a range of different skills than do traditional business-supported softball or golf teams, Evers said.
"An immediate need for curated, genuine interactions between internal teams was obvious as many offices moved to a hybrid or remote setup," she said in a news release. "Corporate Challenge aims to remove the digital barrier and remind people of the joy of competing through field-day style competition. The event provides a stage for companies to amplify their culture, build brand awareness and cultivate meaningful relationships with other local businesses all while supporting a local philanthropy."
(READ MORE: A study's surprise finding: Most workers want to be in the office more often)
In addition to BlueCross, other local participating companies so far in Corporate Challenge Chattanooga include Unum Group, Chattanooga Gas, Erlanger Health System, Steam Logistics, CBL Properties, Axle Logistics, Trident and the Johnson Group.
To learn more about Corporate Challenge, visit corp-challenge.com.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.