Part of my job is to be over the company Health Wellness Plan. For the most part, that includes creating a monthly activity to help the employees stay active and healthy. The biggest part of the year, is in the fall, when we do our company-wide health fair. We bring in a company to do bio-metric screenings and then we have several breakout sessions that the employees rotate through. For this event, we usually have a few employees on a committee to help plan it. Its a large event, so we try to break it up into assignments. We each choose one of the breakout sessions and help schedule someone to come in for that day. Then we also have to plan giveaways and lunch. The planning starts months in advance.
The day before our health fair, one of the presenters called to cancel. We had used them in years past, so we we knew they'd do a good job. But we didn't count on them backing out completely! (For the record, it wasn't one of the presenters I lined up.) So the day before the health fair, as I'm getting back from lunch, my boss came in and asked me how I work under pressure. I thought he was kidding, so I said "pretty good." His reply was, "Good. One of the presenters just cancelled. Can you put something together?"
I thought he was kidding at first. We had been planning this for months. Who backs out the day before? So I told him to give me a few minutes and I would figure something out. Because the bio-metric people can only screen so many employees at a time, its important for us to have something going the rest of the time to keep the employees busy. Not having this session wasn't an option; we needed something.
I needed to run some stuff over to the warehouse. While I was doing that, I thought, "you like walking, why not talk about that?" So I went back to the office and told my boss I would throw something together. With just a few hours left, I went online to find some information and then threw some slides together.
I was pretty nervous that morning, especially when the CEO was in the 2nd session. I felt like I was still figuring it out. But overall, I think it went well.
I had to give my presentation 7 times. I know it was slightly different each time, but I think I got the basic idea across of how important walking is to your health. I ran a little short of the 25 minute window, but the class before me started to run over, so it still kept me on track. I had several employees tell me I did a good job, and one even told my boss he liked my presentation best, because I am a coworker and more relatable. So maybe I'll have to do it again next year.
