It’s not unusual to see insurance companies supporting the communities in which they operate – however, one brokerage decided to back a charity in a slightly more strenuous way recently, when it launched a four-week physical challenge.
In an effort to raise money for the Telethon Kids Institute, while also building stronger working relationships and a healthier company culture, SRG Group decided to run a fitness bootcamp for employees, underwriters and clients.
“The way our bootcamp groups were structured was to combine an even mix of employees, clients and underwriters into two separate morning and evening teams,” said Rod Fitzgerald, MD of SRG.
Speaking to Insurance Business, Fitzgerald said he wanted the bootcamp to support SRG’s ethos of “make insurance easy” – a challenge he says would be impossible without building strong relationships with clients and underwriters.
“On a typical day, clients and underwriters don’t generally cross paths so this was a great opportunity for clients to meet some of our underwriters and get a better understanding of the strong relationships we have formed to help provide them with the best service and rates possible,” he said.
While the twice-weekly workouts were free, funds were generated from a novelty fines system, which penalised participants for discretions such as placing hands on hips or missing sessions.
Overall, the initiative raised more than $7,000, and helped forge stronger relationships both internally and externally – of course, the push also improved health and wellbeing.
“The overall improvements that we witnessed around strength, technique and flexibility were huge,” said Fitzgerald. “Each week, our trainers challenged us to go that little bit further or to add on a heavier weight. All of our participants made excellent progress during the original four-week program, and SRG extended out the program for a further four weeks for participants that wanted to continue their health and fitness journey.”
Fitzgerald also said participants ranged from those already very fit, to those who hadn’t stepped in a gym in years – but feedback had been overwhelmingly positive across the board.
“The point of a program like Bootcamp is to build a team mentality, supporting and encouraging each other to reach new fitness goals and milestones while having fun doing it,” he said.
“We held an event after-party which gave us all the opportunity to preview the corporate video we had produced from the Bootcamp experience, and celebrate our success and laugh at some of novelty fines handed out, and the feedback so far from participants is that they cannot wait for the next one!”
Of course, with the program such a success, it’s no surprise Fitzgerald has plans to bring the bootcamp back next year – along with some other exciting developments.
“The bootcamp will be held again in 2020, we have a number of participants requesting a priority entry due to their experience again this year,” he said, adding that 2019 has been a ‘big year’ for SRG.
“With our move into the Perth CBD set for late November, the recent launch of the SRG Foundation and a focused approach to staff retention and employee benefits, we are setting the scene for a bigger and better 2020,” he said.
