20 Health and Wellness Events Ideas for Your Chamber of Commerce

Health and wellness events and ideas are one of the hottest trends in business right now. From companies looking to institute wellness programs for employees to helping employees manage work and life balance, take better care of themselves, and be more productive, this type of content and events are hot.

While traditionally the chamber wasn’t involved in health and wellness topics, they’re becoming a bigger interest for a lot of your members in their businesses so they’re something you might want to consider. In fact, wellness has become such a big topic these days, it might be time to host your own chamber wellness event or incorporate wellness practices into your existing routine.

We’ve compiled a few health and wellness events and ideas for you to take advantage of this very popular trend.

Health and Wellness Events, Ideas and Topics for Your Chamber That Attendees Will Love

Many of these ideas can be applied to main events or lunch and learns or even smaller sessions. Adapt them to your needs, timing, and budget.

1. Health Fair. Invite vendors and sponsors that work in health and wellness to exhibit at this event. You can offer healthy cooking demos, wellness learning sessions, and more. Invite the whole community. Some chambers offer niche wellness events by targeting seniors or women.
2. Walking Meetings. This is a wellness practice you can adopt at the chamber even if you don’t have a budget for another event. You can host all of your meetings as walking meetings and invite others to join you or create your own walking lunch group and invite other businesses to join you in getting more exercise and participating in a conversation or two.
3. Productivity Audit. Invite a specialist to come in and talk to a small crowd about becoming more productive and thus less stressed. Everyone could use more hours in the day and a productivity coach can help people regain lost moments.
4. Host a Session on How to Create a Health and Wellness Program for Businesses. This might be a topic your members are interested in as many employers are exploring instituting wellness programs. You can host a lunch and learn around this exciting suggestion.
5. Kicking Sugar or Eating More Whole Foods. This is a hot eating trend right now and one that can get us all on the cleaner eating train. Many people are out there looking for education on how to do this and you may have a lot of members who can help.
6. Host a Health or Exercise Challenge. These are extremely popular and can boost social media shares and likes. Usually, these challenges look to change one behavior by requiring some sort of healthy activity for one month like giving up sugar, drinking more water, or running three miles every day. Check with your city to see if they are already hosting some sort of fitness initiative. You can piggyback on it for greater publicity.
7. Yoga. You needn’t offer yoga classes to embrace this trend. Simply add a few stretches into meeting breaks or start a networking event with a few movements. Yoga can be done by a group with different fitness levels and those stretches are often just what business professionals who spend too much time sitting need. Yoga is also an ideal stress buster, something most people could use more of.
8. Update the Food at Your Events. Maybe you’re not ready for a wellness event or maybe you’re cutting back on chamber events altogether. That doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate the wellness trend regardless. Reconsider the food you offer at the events. Are they usually carb-laden, high fat noshes? If so, add a few more greens or more fruit, less fat. Your members who are trying to watch what they eat will appreciate the change. As a bonus, your audience will be more focused without the sugar crash that comes after eating that type of fare.
9. Mental Wellness Expo. This has become a hot topic recently. Mental wellness is just as important as physical wellness. Many people are looking to grow their business but that can take its toll on mental well-being, adding more stress and concerns, not to mention fatigue, which can all contribute to mental unease. Consider hosting a mental wellness fair or expo or incorporate those topics in your health exhibition. You can also bring in a speaker from your health system to provide some tips for your members for maintaining good mental health for themselves and their employees.
10. Health and Wellness Webinars and Podcasts. You can provide your members with wellness resources through webinars and podcasts as well. Speak to a member who focuses on wellness issues and see if you can talk them into hosting a webinar for your members or to be a guest on a chamber podcast. You can record the webinar and make it available in a webinar library. Don’t forget to transcribe the content of the webinar or podcast and provide that as well.
11. Host a Healthy Cooking Contest. Chili cook-offs are popular but why not try a new spin on an old favorite? You can bring in local celebrities to judge who makes the healthiest, most delicious dish in town.
12. Team-Building Exercises. Whether done with the chamber staff or leading them as part of a business team competition series, team-building activities can have big payouts when it comes to improving productivity and employee cohesion.
13. Field Day. Remember field day as a kid and how much fun it was? You can host a similar event for your staff or encourage local businesses to send a team. Spend the day with some friendly competition and have fun getting some exercise in. You can host many different events that are perfect for a variety of fitness levels.
14. 10K. Some chambers have started participating in a local 5 or 10k. These races can be an excellent source of additional revenue. Your chamber can also pair up with a charity or cause and give part of the proceeds to that organization.
15. Chamber Cookbook. As more and more people look for healthy recipes, creating a healthy chamber cookbook can help your members see another side of you. It’s possible to use it as an additional source of revenue or just post recipes online as a special member thank you.
16. Implement Flexible Work Hours. This health and wellness benefit has two advantages. It helps employees achieve a better work/life balance, especially on days when you know they’ll be working late on a chamber event. But it also goes a long way in hiring. It’s often difficult for the chamber to compete with the salaries of businesses and they may lose many good employees to more lucrative offers. Flexible work hours is a concept that is easy enough to implement and can go a long way to making employees happy. It may also give them a reason to turn down a more lucrative offer because their position with the chamber provides greater flexibility.
17. Remote Work. Along the lines of the previous idea, allowing employees to work one day out of the office can be a fun benefit and one that places your employees out in the community. Don’t want to allow working from home? How about encouraging employees to work around town supporting members like working from the local coffee house? You could even create a “where’s the chamber staffer?” game on social media.
18. Join a Sports Team. Your community likely has a softball or kickball league for adults. If your chamber staff is large enough, and there’s enough interest, you could put together a team. It’s not only a good way to get exercise but also recruit new members while having some fun. If one doesn’t exist, consider creating a one- or two-day tournament with member teams.
19. Member-to-Member Discounts. Work with health and wellness providers in your community to offer their services at a discount to your members.
20. Host an Eight-Hour Sleep Challenge. Sleep is one of the healthiest things you can do for your body and yet so many people don’t get enough. You can host an eight-hour sleep challenge for members and people in the community who want to take part. Challenge them to join you on your Facebook page and post their hours of sleep each day. Then post encouraging them to get enough rest and make personal health a priority.

Health and wellness is a top concern of a lot of employers out there and many are embracing health and wellness events, activities, and benefits in order to be more appealing to potential employees. You can set the tone by organizing your own events and activities at the chamber or providing community members with some helpful information on how to make the most of their own wellness events.

Remember, you needn’t do this all on your own. You likely have members who work in a wellness field who may be eager to share their knowledge with the community.

Just ask.