Chair Massage: The Perfect Office Holiday Party Idea

Chair massage is a unique office holiday party idea

Massage is a great, unusual addition to your party. It's a great way to encourage employees to attend, especially if it's an after hours party during one of the busiest times of the year. It's a great break from traditional party games (if that's what your office is into) or other more formal corporate holiday traditions.

Massages relieve stress

It's no secret that the holidays can be a busy, stressful time for many people. Not only are many people preparing for travel, but they're busy with running from social commitments with family, friends and neighbors. (Not to mention the financial stress that many experience.) Massages is a quick and easy way to insert some relaxation into stressed employees lives—and it'll last beyond the time they spend in the massage chair.

Related: Benefits of Corporate Massage

Holiday party massage is low maintenance

Some corporate holiday party ideas are a lot of work to implement. You may have to gather supplies, make several phone calls to secure vendors or entertainment, or find people to run the show during the party. Massage is incredibly low maintenance. You'll just provide the massage company with the details of the event—when, where, and how many massage therapists you'd like. They'll take care of the rest, including finding massage therapists to staff the event, providing them with the details, and making sure everything goes off without a hitch. The day of the event, the massage therapists will show up a few minutes early, set up their equipment, and be ready to provide relaxation to your employees.

Holiday party massage will improve morale

Many companies use their holiday party as a way to thank their employees for a year of hard work. Coming up with a creative way to say "Thank You" that goes beyond gift cards or company swag doesn't have to be difficult—use the massages! Employees will know you value them when they see that you're offering massage. For many people, massage is a luxury and if they're employer is paying, they really do appreciate it.

Massage won't interrupt your holiday party plans

Many companies have corporate holiday traditions that employees will be expecting and may not want to break away from. Massage doesn't have to interrupt whatever you've already got planned. It's a great addition to the event. Putting a few chairs in the corner and offering quick 5-10 massages won't infringe on other parts of your celebration—in fact, it'll only enhance it.

Office holiday party chair massage requirements

If you're new to office chair massage, you may not know what to expect. Don't worry—we're experts and will let you know what to expect.

Chair massage space

The typical chair massage will require a 5x5 space to work in. If multiple massage therapists are coming to your office, you'll need that kind of space for each one. You'll also want to carefully consider the environment in which your employees will receive their massage. We've done massage in quiet, out-of-the-way break rooms and in loud and bustling conference venues. It'll be up to you to decide how you want your party chair massages to happen.

How to prepare your employees

When people receive chair massages for the first time, they often have lots of questions because they just aren't sure what to expect. Your employees won't have to remove any clothing to receive their massages. They should avoid bulky clothing. If your party is a formal affair, you may have some women concerned that they can't receive a chair massage in a skirt. It is absolutely possible to get on and off a chair massage while wearing a skirt.

Massage traffic control

Massage will be a popular addition to your party, so you'll need to decide how to deal with traffic control. You can form a line at the party, or have a sign-up sheet that goes around at the party with designated massage slots. Each of these options has pros and cons. Forming a line is great if your employees will be bringing guests to the party. They can stand in line with their plus-one, and won't have to worry about signing them up for a slot beforehand. If you don't want your employees to spend their party time waiting in a line, a sign-up sheet is great. People will know exactly what time to show up for their massage and won't spend their whole night waiting for a massage. With this option, you do risk people forgetting their assigned massage slot and wasting precious massage time. Whatever you decide will really be based on what size your party is, what venue you're holding it in, and other needs of your office.

Source: Amelia Wilcox of Nivati.com

The Benefits of Office Chair Massage for Your Business

Businesses want to know if office chair massage can cost-effectively help their bottom-line. It’s easy to understand that an office chair massage program can reward employees and lower stress, but will that investment translate into a net benefit for the company?

A quick intro: What is Office Chair Massage?

Office chair massage, also called mobile chair massage or onsite seated chair massage, is generally seen in high traffic, high stress locations like trade shows, conventions, and airports but it is also used a lot in workplaces such as offices, call centres, factories and warehouses. Companies utilize corporate chair massage services during their health and wellness week, and for their employee appreciation days, corporate, sporting, and VIP events. Chair massage is an excellent way to increase attendance, foot traffic, and morale, and decrease stress.

Benefits to the employees:

Studies involving workplace stress show it has a significant impact on an individual's health. Stress can be linked to an increase in occurrences of of headaches, backaches, eye strain, neck pain, lowered immunity to sickness and infections, high blood pressure, ulcers, and heart disease. Stress takes an emotional toll and can be linked to heightened levels of depression, anxiety, listlessness, poor concentration, irritability and anger.

When onsite chair massage is offered to employees a company is taking a concrete step towards combating stress and improving employee wellness. Employees who take part in the massage program feel valued and that their hard work is appreciated. This recognition helps employees move from a high-stress negative mind-space back to positive one, and they return to work feeling energized, refocused, and productive.

10 Benefits of Chair Massage for Employees:

• Lowers anxiety

• Decreases stress

• Relieves muscle pain and headaches

• Increases circulation

• Lowers blood pressure

• Boosts the immune system

• Improves quality of sleep

• Increases flexibility and mobility

• Enhances overall sense of health and wellbeing

• Heightens feeling of being valued and cared for

A company-paid chair massage leaves employees and guests feeling energized, rejuvenated, valued and relaxed. Massage positively affects your body, mind and your sense of well-being and happiness.

Benefits to the company:

It’s easy to understand how a significant amount of the stress in someone’s life could be work related. As a result, businesses are operating with a high number of stressed out employees. This stress builds up over time and can create toxicity in the workplace, resulting in a negative work environment, lower productivity and a high turnover rate.

Implementing a corporate massage program is a great way to upgrade the work experience for everyone involved, and provides the following benefits:

10 Benefits of Office Chair Massage for the Employer:

• Increases morale and enhances corporate culture

• Creates an atmosphere of trust and loyalty

• Increases staff retention

• Reduces stress and anxiety in the workplace

• Reduces sick days and absenteeism

• Reduces the high cost of employee turnover

• Helps attract top talent to the company

• Increases accuracy and creative thinking

• Decreases workplace injuries

• It’s one size fits all and is more memorable than a staff lunch!

Source: Massage At Work Canada

How To Introduce Your Boss to Chair Massages in the Workplace

You’ve done your research, and you know about the Benefits of Corporate Wellness Massage for both the employee and the business. Now you’re ready to present a proposal. This article and template can help you articulate why your company should make chair massage part of its wellness program.

Your company's final decision-makers will be more likely to sign on to the program if you can outline the benefits for the company and help them understand how reasonable the costs for a chair massage program can be. If you haven’t already, you may want to discuss the possibility of a massage at work program with your co-workers to gauge interest and build excitement. You’ll be prepared with this valuable information in case you run into any road-block comments such as “No one would want a massage here at work”. It also shows you’ve done your homework!

Highlighting the benefits of corporate massage, the positive impact on the company and the team’s interest are great things to include when communicating to your decision makers. To help you get started we suggest using the following template as a starting point for your own letter.

A template for introducing your boss to chair massage:

Dear {Decision Maker},

I've been looking into ways for [Company Name] to demonstrate to the staff that the company acknowledges their contributions and truly cares about their health and wellbeing. I think we could accomplish this by offering everyone a relaxational chair massage once a month. I’ve taken an informal survey of the team to gauge interest and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Next month, instead of another team lunch, I’d like to propose that we reallocate those same funds toward something that would do wonders to boost morale. I propose we book a chair massage day.

A massage at work day is a way to thank the team and acknowledge them for their hard work. It’s also a great way to boost morale, energy, creativity, and productivity. It benefits each member of the team and the company overall. It’s a win-win. I think we’ll find that having a massage at work day is an excellent ROI!

Benefits to the employee include:

• Creates a feeling of being valued and cared for

• Reduces anxiety

• Lowers stress

• Helps with muscle pain and headaches

• Increases circulation

• Lowers blood pressure

• Strengthens the immune system

• Improves quality of sleep

• Improves flexibility

• Increases sense of health and wellbeing

Benefits to the company include:

• Improves morale and creates a positive corporate culture

• Reduces stress and anxiety in the workplace

• Reduces sick days and absenteeism

• Reduces the high cost of employee turnover

• Helps attract top talent to the company

• Increases accuracy and creative thinking

I found a company called RelaxNGo (www.relaxngowellness.com) who specializes in corporate massage programs. They have rave reviews on, and they have 5-star ratings too.

Setting up the first massage day and running an ongoing program will be easy as RelaxNGo provides all the tools and support we’ll need. They even offer online scheduling and automated text-reminders so no one misses their massage appointment.

If you are open to the concept of a RelaxNGo day for our company please let me know and I’ll give RelaxNGo a call to firm up cost and timing.

{Your signature}

And to prepare you for any push-back, here are the best answers to any major concerns your boss might have about having massage at work days in your office.

BUDGET: We don’t have the budget for a corporate massage program.

Budget concerns are quite often the greatest hurdle for many clients wanting to start a massage at work program. This is a legitimate concern, but there are some creative options! Before the idea is tossed aside for good, consider some of these creative ways around the funding issue:

1. Use the corporate wellness budget. Billing massage days under this budget is an effective tactic. Stress reduction and improved immunity are just a couple of the many health benefits that massage offers. Because of this, many companies use their corporate wellness budget to finance the corporate massages for their employees.

2. Combine budgets. If you’re putting together a large event like a health fair or holiday party, one option that works especially well is to combine budgets from more than one department to pay for the massages. Consider combining your: staff social budget, safety budget, and/or your health and wellness budget.

EMPLOYEES SHOULD PAY: We can do this, but only if the employees pay for it themselves

A common misconception for businesses looking to introduce chair massage is that a massage program can pay for itself by having employees pay for their own massages. Although having employees pay for their own chair massage sessions seems like a good way to provide the benefit of chair massage without costing the company anything, the approach has several major drawbacks and can often do more to lower employee morale than improve it.

1. Employees don’t get a feeling of being cared for, or cared about when they have to pay for massage

2. Employee-paid chair massage programs reach very few people and have low utilization

3. Promoting an employee-paid program is awkward, and leaves the employees being sold-to

4. Employee-paid massage programs squash morale.

For more reason’s why employee-paid massage programs are a bad approach, see our article on Why Employee-paid corporate massage programs fail.

SCHEDULING: Scheduling these massages is going to be a real headache, it’s too much work.

With the right in-office massage at work partner, scheduling shouldn’t be a hassle, nor should it be time-consuming.

1. Online Scheduling & Tech Platforms. The best solution for scheduling is to find and hire a corporate massage company that has an online system to manage the entire massage program for you. They set up the schedule, send you a link, you broadcast it to your team and voila! Everyone signs up and manages their own appointment times. From appointment reminders via text and email, to custom email campaigns, to online and mobile booking apps this option has you covered.

2. Sign-Up Sheets. Paper sign-up sheets are a popular option for smaller organizations. A designated person from your company is put in charge of sign-ups. An email goes out announcing the upcoming massage day, the list is posted at reception or in a common area for all to see and everyone signs up for their massage on the sheet. Easy as pie!

SECURITY: We’re a secure facility. We can’t have outside vendors coming in.

This is completely understandable, security is so important. It can be disappointing to have escalated your workplace massage proposal all the way to top management, only to have it shot down due to security concerns. A promise that you can obtain the following from your massage partner may be the assurance the boss needs.

1. Background checks. Assigning specific massage practitioners to your location, then conducting third party background checks may be a security work around that would work for your organization.

2. NDAs. Your massage partner and their practitioners should be willing to sign an NDA (non disclosure agreement).

24 HOUR FACILITIES: Our facility has staff working around the clock. What about the late and early morning shifts? We can’t offer it to some and not others. A nice idea, but this will never work.

An experienced massage at work partner will know how to make this work for you! The most effective way to work with 24 hour facilities, such as call centers, factories, and hospitals is to span the massage hours to overlap two different shifts, effectively reaching two shifts at once. For example, bringing in massage chairs early in the morning would cover the end of a night-shift and the beginning of a day-shift, for example.

SPACE: We don’t have enough room to do massage at work.

Each massage chair and practitioner requires just 6x6’ of space. An empty office or boardroom, or quite corner is usually sufficient. However, if finding even this little amount of space is an issue that may prevent you from having massage at work, it’s time to get creative!

Some ideas to consider:

1. Have the massage practitioner go from person to person at their own desk. This way you don’t need any space for the massage chair. There is no set up, and no designated space needed.

2. Take it outside! Setting up the massage chairs outside may be an option. A courtyard, building roof or nearby greenspace or park, anywhere in the open air can add a heightened level of relaxation and sense of “getaway” for your employees.

LIABILITY: What if something goes wrong. We can’t take on the liability involved with having massage at work.

Hiring individual massage therapists, monitoring certification, current registration status, and liability insurance coverage can get complicated. One way to avoid all this hassle, paperwork, and liability is to partner with a company who manages all of this for you. When choosing an established, experienced, massage company to partner with this shouldn’t be an issue because any company you hire should have substantial liability insurance. Simply ask for proof of insurance or a copy of their policy.

Source: Massage At Work Canada