How we broke records with an Olympic approach for Bridgestone

The mantra at Bridgestone is “Safety First, Show Care and Stay Connected”. Placing such a paramount focus on the health and wellbeing of your employees, resonates directly with the core values at Energy Lab. We believe in putting people first, and making sure they can perform optimally under any circumstance. Safe to say, a valuable partnership was formed right away.

Who is Bridgestone?

As a world leader in tyres and sustainable mobility solutions, Bridgestone employs over 20,000 individuals in the EMIA region, including some of the industry’s foremost chemists, engineers and data scientists. The Bridgestone group boasts approximately 130 manufacturing plants and R&D facilities, distributing products to more than 150 countries worldwide. They are also proud to be a Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Partner.

What was their challenge?

Bridgestone’s commitment to enhance employee wellbeing and to nurture a healthy work-life balance, drives it to continuously scrutinize their work culture. By actively championing a global cultural transformation rooted in empathy, they are able to share their values outlined in the “Bridgestone E8 commitment”. This allows for best practices to be shared and surveys are frequently conducted, to examine resilience, employee engagement, connectivity and overall wellbeing.

This brought to light 3 focus points Bridgestone themselves try to continuously integrate into their business:

• Enhancing employee engagement: Through various activities they have tried to increase job satisfaction, pride and engagement. It’s a challenge that needs constant work.
• Balancing work-life and wellbeing: Bridgestone strives to improve work-life balance, especially since the pandemic of 2020, when working from home disrupted boundaries, and set shifted expectations.
• Promoting continuous learning and skill development: In a rapidly changing world, Bridgestone acknowledges the importance of providing opportunities to learn, adapt to new skills and stay up to date. Continuous learning should be embraced.

With these 3 objectives in mind, Golazo Energy was asked to integrate a tailor-made wellbeing programme into Bridgestone’s business. A programme, aligned with the mantra “Safety First, Show care and stay connected.”

Building the solution

Together we introduced B-Olympic in 2018, an internal engagement platform consisting of exercise challenges and inspiration. It aims to encourage colleagues to lead more active and healthier lives. Originally aligned with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the B-Olympic plan had specific objectives, which have since evolved as the company’s focus shifted. Now we aim not only to boost the physical health level, but other energy levels as well, such as emotional, mental and spiritual energy levels.

In the B-Olympic 2023 programme we unlocked employee potential by offering physical and non-physical challenges, inspiring keynotes, as well as applying the insights of those keynotes.

Individually this leads to a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. Employees who challenge themselves are engaged and enjoy working . Collectively, the team challenges lead to a shared sense of responsibility and pride.

The wellbeing of employees gets a physical, emotional, and mental boost. They are more resilient, and in result more willing to adapt to changes and challenges. This means productivity goes up, and stress goes down. Not taking stress home, allows for a better work-life balance.

By offering inspiring keynotes and programs, employees receive new insights, creating a culture where learning is celebrated. The satisfaction of conquering a challenge by using a new skill is the best incentive to encourage continuous learning.