Hundred-Fold Growth In Ten Years: Workplace Wellness Company Celebrates A Decade Of Business Success

Marking a decade of success in global wellness, Global Corporate Challenge® (GCC) will launch its tenth annual event on May 23, this year.

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Global Corporate Challenge

May 01, 2013, 04:05 ET

MELBOURNE, Australia, May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Starting with the simple but ambitious idea to 'get the world moving', the global workplace health initiative has experienced rapid growth and international success over its ten years of operation. So much so that GCC's participant uptake has grown hundred-fold over the company's ten years, with up to 300,000 employees across more than one hundred countries expected to step up and participate in this year.

"Our tenth year, we anticipate our strongest performance to date" says GCC CEO, Tom Sermon.

"We forecast a strong fifty percent growth in participation on last year's sell-out program to welcome 1,300 organisations and in excess of 280,000 participants for GCC 2013."

Founded in Australia in 2003 to address the health of an increasingly sedentary workforce, success was hardly assured for the GCC when co-founders Glenn Riseley and John Hillier launched the business with a brave new idea and staff of just three. At the time, the small start-up hoped to engage 3,000 participants in its inaugural Challenge, and to prove both the need for and efficacy of their initiative in combating the obesity epidemic impacting workforces and impairing business performance. Their hopes materialised, establishing a solid business foundation and spurring rapid growth over successive years.

Today, helmed by British-born Sermon, the GCC has regional offices across Europe, North America and Australia, as well as international partnerships operating throughout South America, Africa, Middle East and Asia. In line with this expansion, the GCC has secured an impressive portfolio of global clients - including 38 of the world's 100 most prominent brands over the last 3 years alone.

However, it is GCC's commitment to changing employee behaviour via product innovation - refined and enhanced each year to address evolving needs and to capitalise on new insights and technologies - which has driven the wellness company's rapid rise. Ongoing improvement and evolution - such as expansion to a twelve month duration and introduction of new accelerometer technology to help employees better track their daily activity this year - has consistently delivered clients a wellness solution which facilitates genuine and meaningful employee engagement (without carrots or sticks) and positive, long-term returns to the workplace.

"Globally, organisations are increasingly recognising the opportunity - and responsibility - to help employees manage their health and wellbeing" says Sermon.

"Besides the clear benefits of improved workforce resilience on workplace productivity and absenteeism levels, a demonstrated commitment to employee wellbeing also positively impacts recruitment, particularly amongst next-generation talent who firmly prioritise workplace culture - often over cash".

Indeed, the wellness industry is experiencing unprecedented growth in markets worldwide with the National Wellness Institute is declaring it a US$2 trillion dollar global industry. According to Sermon, the GCC is poised to play a critical role in both leveraging and shaping this boom.

"Our 2013 Global Workplace Wellness Survey data showed that 84 percent of organisations today have their wellness targets set on sustainable behavioural change outcomes" said Sermon.

"Changing employee behaviour is our speciality. Ten years of clinical and empirical success in helping more than 3,400 clients and almost a million people achieve improved health and performance sets us in good stead to lead the charge" he said.

About The Global Corporate Challenge®

Starting in May each year, Global Corporate Challenge® (GCC) engages participants in a 16 week virtual journey around the world, and over the course of 12 months, supports them to achieve healthy and long-term behavioural change. Broadly attractive and accessible, the GCC's success is its science based approach that delivers genuine and sustainable improvement to employee physical and mental health, enhanced productivity, reduced absenteeism and a stronger culture of resilience.

GCC's key regional markets include North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. As such, GCC has offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Toronto, London, Christchurch and Melbourne, as well as sales and customer service presence in Dubai, Prague, Zurich, Belo Horizonte, Johannesburg and Delhi.