5 Ideas for a Walking Challenge a Work

Admin • 2021.11.16

Taking a break from your computer can help you maintain better mental health and prevent many heart disease diseases. You should make walking to be a part of your company culture. We will tell you the whys and the hows. Just like we did about employee wellness programs.

Fun office challenges will boost the team morale

We have had many office fitness challenge ideas before: some are hard to implement and some easy ones as the walking challenge. Wellness programs not only mean physical activities. A good fitness challenge won’t just improve your employees’ health condition but it’s also an effective team-building event. You can kill two birds with one stone while organizing fun office challenges. 

A key factor of having such competition is that the management should participate too. You have to step forward, tell your goals, and being a member of the team. Clear communication can help you to maintain a healthier work environment. 

Why organize a walking challenge at work?

Organizing a walking challenge at work is a win-win situation. Your goals and your employees’ goals can meet easily. What do your employees want? A healthier lifestyle, a better environment, less sick days, healthier food, weight loss. What do you want? An effective way to motivate your colleagues, the ability to reduce health care costs, better employee engagement, fewer sick days, and a better work environment with a good employer branding as a side-effect.

Let the numbers speak for themselves: having a workplace fitness challenge with a great app makes a 27% decrease in sick days, a ~10% increase in productivity, and a 10% drop off fluctuation. 

How to organize a step challenge? 

The steps of a step challenge are complicated. You need a wellness strategy: don’t just choose a volunteer who is motivated in fitness and don’t give the step challenge as a task to someone in the human resources department. Having good preparation is inevitable: know the whys and the hows, don’t organize a walking challenge randomly. 

Gradation is a must: start providing healthier food in the cafeteria, encourage smoking cessation, provide 15 minutes break for your employees. Don’t make a walking competition with any preliminary signs: your colleagues will think it’s just a one-time event and not a change in the company culture.

You can start with a simple walking meeting

We recommend you to have your door always open for your colleagues and listen to their ideas and problems. But it’s even better if one of your employees wants to talk with you and you do this by walking. Implementing walking meetings is a big step forward. 

When someone asks you a question, just answer: “Why don’t we take a walk around the building and talk about that?” 

If you start walking, your workers will start walking.

Then use wellness incentives

If your colleagues need a bit of motivation to start living a healthier lifestyle, you can boost them by using wellness incentives. These incentives can be cheap and costly, too: it depends on how hard the challenge is. 

A walking competition is considered an easier challenge that everyone could participate in, so we don’t recommend you reward a big number of participants. Read our further recommendations about wellness incentives.

Use a fitness tracker app: Fitpuli

Using an app can save you a lot of time. Wearing smartwatches and pedometers can even boost the effectiveness of your wellness programs. But what does an app do for you?

• It measures the number of steps
• It tracks your health metrics
• It collects data and creates reports to the management
• It motivates and gives reminders: it helps in smoking cessation
• Fitpuli helps you to find your inner yogi: learn the basics of yoga

5 walking challenge ideas

Now you know what you need to do, and you are ready to organize your walking challenge. 

Case study: Fitpuli helps Union employees take 1,000,000,000 steps in 2020

1. Marketing vs Sales – a friendly competition between departments

Divide your employees into teams. Compete between departments or juniors vs mediors vs seniors. You choose: but be fair: team sizes have to be quite the same. There are two different kinds of competitions. 

Case #1: The team that reaches 1.000.000 steps first will win. 

Case #2: The team that has more steps after 30 days will win. 

2. Duels and personal challenges

Individual challenges can be effective too: if your colleague walks more than 10.000 steps every day for several months long, that colleague has to earn some reward. 

But you can make duels too: walk more than your neighbor/deskmate. Be careful: your employees have to bond and not become rivals.

3. Hide & Seek – a bit differently

Take a photo of a building or commercial nearby your office. Post it to the company’s Facebook group or send a newsletter: whoever finds it first will win a prize.

Your workers will start walking. 

4. The most improved

With Fitpuli, you can track your workers’ walking data. Reward the ones who improved the most. Bigger prizes are usable in competitions like this, and also, these kinds of challenges mostly run for 6-12 months.

5. The one challenge that involves the whole company

Reach the moon! Just like we mentioned above: set a number big enough your company has to work to achieve. The reward is for the whole company: a big celebration.

Summary: walking competitions

• Don’t start ASAP, build a better work environment first. 
• Do walking meetings
• Use incentives
• Use an app to track physical activities
• Be creative
• Take part as a manager too

Read more about step challenge team names, and other gamification methods here: Step Challenge at Work: A Guide to Organize Your Own