It’s hard to believe, but lockdown is no longer! We hope you’ve all had a chance to see your extended families and enjoy going farther than five kilometres from home. During this challenging time, we wanted to help keep you all healthy, happy and entertained, so we launched a few initiatives with these goals in mind. They included online fitness classes, “Lunch & Learn” web sessions, and a colouring competition.

Mental and physical health

Many of us have been working exclusively from home during the recent outbreak, and all while gyms were closed in New South Wales and Victoria. To make sure everyone could stay fit, we ran some online Pilates and HIIT (high intensity interval training) classes in September and October. We know how important it is to keep moving when we’re venturing out less and sitting in front of our computers all day. And based on your feedback, it seems like these classes helped keep you active!

We also know that mental fitness is just as important as physical fitness, so we made sure we had that covered too. During October, we partnered with Cuppa of Life to offer a weekly “Lunch & Learn” series, which covered a range of topics including overcoming anxiety, understanding emotions and tackling insecurities. During such strange and testing times, it’s more important than ever to employ good self-care techniques, and to be aware of the stressors around us. We hope the series was interesting and useful.

NEOS’ colouring competition

Mindfulness is a great tactic for positive mental health, and one way to achieve this is through colouring. Of course, the simple act of keeping kids entertained is also good for one’s mental health. With both these goals in mind, we launched our colouring competition, and we were thrilled to see all your beautiful work. We had 181 colourful entries across four age categories, and our winners’ entries are featured below. We hope this gave your kids – and you – some welcome distraction and positivity during a tricky time!

Working from home certainly has its perks, but the lack of commute sometimes means you get less exercise. You also spend less time with colleagues, and of course keeping kids occupied while you’re working can be a real challenge. We hope we were able to help a little with these downsides during lockdown. Please reach out to us if you need any help while transitioning back into the office.