Summer is the perfect time to focus on employee health in your organization. From exercise to healthy eating, and from community interaction to increased happiness, corporate wellness is important to you organization’s culture and the productivity of your team.

During the summer months, there are increased opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, spend time picnicking or BBQing with friends, and commit to a healthier lifestyle. Encourage your employees to try fun, healthy habits with these five ideas:

Schedule Recess

Take a cue from your kids’ daily routines and schedule a 15 minute time-slop in the afternoon for everyone to get away from his or her desk. Go outside (if the weather’s nice), socialize with each other, and enjoy some intentional play.

You can even try equipping  your office with active games like a frisbee, nerf guns, or a soccer ball that employees can pass around to each other to get their blood flowing. An added benefit is an increased sense of camaraderie among team members.

Host a Health Office BBQ

Ask employees to share their favorite healthy BBQ recipes, like grilled vegetables, fruit skewers, and chicken kebabs. Compile the best ones into a collection and share around the office via a downloadable document in email or a simple printed booklet.

Celebrate the release of your healthy summer cookbook with an office BBQ where employees can taste and share their contributions. Set the mood with a summer playlist, ice cold drinks, and (real fruit) popsicles for dessert!

Start a Hiking Club

Summer is the perfect time for hiking, no matter where you’re located in the country. For cooler climates, schedule a family hike and picnic on a Saturday or Sunday where employees can bring their families and dogs and spend a day exercising and socializing in a beautiful setting.

For warmer climates, offer employees the perfect opportunity to beat the heat and drive a few hours to a cooler hiking destination. Arrange a carpool list so that team members can share the drive (and healthy car snacks) with one another to foster community. Don’t forget to take photos for your Company Culture Page on your hiring site!

Subsidize Wearable Technology that Helps Employees Track Their Activity

Wearable technologies like FitBit can help people monitor their fitness levels, track their sleep, and challenge friends who also have the device. You can help offset the cost of these wearable technologies to encourage employees to join this healthy trend.

If you have a handful of people in your company who have devices, organize a month-long challenge that lets employees compete for the number of steps, hours of restful sleep, or amount of calories burned. You can offer a prize, like a free gym membership, to the person who wins the competition.

Offer Unlimited Vacation

Ok, before you close the browser on me, consider this: when companies like Netflix and Virgin Airlines switched to an unlimited vacation policy they experienced a marked upward spike in everything — morale, creativity, and productivity went through the roof. Not only that, but employees were in better position to take a vacation when they did, leaving the company in a much steadier place in their absence.

Many companies might fear that employees might take advantage of such a policy, but with the added expectation that employees plan for their time off, most employers with this approach have found that employees take the same amount, if not less time off during the year, but feel more free to do so should they choose.

Ready to build a happier team? Get started with a culture-first approach to hiring.