Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group has touched millions of lives worldwide across a multitude of industries. The company is approaching their 50th year in business, and are very well known for their airlines, electronics, smartphones, music, and more.
With approximately 71,000 employees across 35 countries, Virgin invests heavily into connecting their global workforce, streamlining processes, and putting employee wellbeing first. Even Richard Branson himself is commonly talking about health and wellness on his personal Instagram!
In true Virgin fashion, they not only created an internal employee wellness program, they created an entire company around it, Virgin Pulse. The company describes their mission as “creating workforce habits that matter”. Through technology such as an online employee wellness dashboard, hardware like a FitBit or Apple Watch, and in person fitness classes or group events, Virgin Pulse helps team members track, maintain, and progress to their specific health goals.
They just wrapped up a conference in New Orleans, where Sir Richard Branson, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, and other keynote headliners took center stage. A main purpose of the annual conference is gathering attendees from other companies, as the Virgin Pulse Platform is used and customized worldwide to suit specific team needs. The tagline for the product suite, is that Virgin Pulse offers “technology to replenish the modern worker”. Brands like BBVA Compass, Intuit, and Morton Salt are all users of the platform.
The word replenish is key — the pillars of health and wellbeing could be listed as Health, Wealth, Meaning/Spiritual, Romance, Friendship, Family, Fun, Work, etc, but we all know it’s about seeking wellness, not always being in even balance across all disciplines, as it’s just not realistic! The constant pursuit of excellence in all areas of your life is what your employees will see you modeling, and then with an employee wellness program, you can facilitate their own advancement.
What steps are you taking for amping up your employee wellness game — maybe take a page out of the Virgin playbook?
