Year-end reflections from Firstbeat Well-Being

Almost the end of the year! It’s a good time to do some reflecting about what happened in 2012 and what’s ahead in 2013. The year was filled with progress, program updates, new international and Finnish partners and thousands of Lifestyle Assessments around the world (a brilliant 10-fold increase over 2011 in assessments conducted outside Finland!). Better-looking reporting and technological improvements (with a few bugs discovered and promptly fixed along the way…!) have made our jobs a lot faster and easier in many ways, but the basic message and challenge of learning to balance our lives when it comes to appropriate amounts of stress, recovery and exercise remains the same! Here are some highlights from the past year:

Internationally…

• 1^st annual Distributor seminar in London in March 2012 (attended by partners from 9 different countries), to be followed by the 2^nd international Firstbeat seminar in March 2013 for both sports and well-being distributors (attendance expected from close to 20 countries).

• Multinational Lifestyle assessment project in Germany in February 2012.

• Lifestyle Assessment training seminars in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany (Nov-Dec 2011) and France (July 2012)

• New Firstbeat partners in Dubai, Czech Republic, France, Holland and Oklahoma USA – and several more via our Distributors in different countries! See more details about our expanding team here >>

Other selected highlights…

• New Overview reports to simplify and clarify the message to the end client

• Online Learning Center to provide support, training and reviewing material to Firstbeat specialists

• Firstbeat on Facebook!

• Several new marketing brochures and videos, see an example here >>

Today’s society expects efficiency, speed, usability and more automatic features, and the Firstbeat team (a big hand here to our brilliant coders, who are an unseen but crucial part of the team!) is doing its best to keep up – and ahead of – the well-being field by making the Lifestyle Assessment a ‘must-have-tool’! We are collecting valuable testimonials from individuals and companies who have undergone lifestyle assessments (http://www.firstbeat.fi/work-well-being/success-stories) and we have a lot of exciting new tools and features planned for the New Year too. Stay tuned!

In the end, though, it always comes down to the individual who is connected to the Bodyguard for 3 days, his/her experience during this period, and the interpretation and message that he/she walks away with to enhance his/her quality of life. This is where we need caring and well-trained professionals who bring the method ‘to life’! Big thanks to this expanding team of specialists in Finland and around the world!

With this in mind, we want to wish everyone a very relaxing and energizing holiday season, with some deserved time off work and focus on the things that YOU enjoy… skiing, hiking, dancing, baking, reading, meditating, movies… Here’s CHEERS to all to an exciting 2013!