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Office Step Challenge For Employees
Many employees are looking for ways to be more productive and stay healthy. There’s no better way than by incorporating a step challenge into your office. This small change in your routine will help you feel more energized, less stressed, and happier. Not to mention, it’ll make you healthier by burning more calories and raising your heart rate-both great for weight loss. Get employees together to compete in a step challenge, either on the ground floor or up against each other. You can also have everyone go outside to take advantage of fresh air and sunlight. Incorporating a step challenge into your workday can be very beneficial for both the employee and the company.
One way to incorporate this is by making it an office competition, where employees are encouraged to compete against each other in steps throughout the day. The winner of these competitions will get something like their name on a plaque or trophy for one week, with different prizes every few weeks. Another option would be for everyone in the office to either battle it out on ground level or go outside and take advantage of sunlight and fresh air while they’re at it.
What Is A Step Challenge?
A step challenge is a competition where employees are encouraged to take more steps during their workday. The winner gets an award or plaque for one week. There are different prizes every few weeks.
Incorporating a step challenge into your workday can be very beneficial for both the employee and the company. One way to incorporate this is by making it an office competition, where employees are encouraged to compete against each other in steps throughout the day. The winner of these competitions will get something like their name on a plaque or trophy for one week with different prizes every few weeks. Another option would be for everyone in the office to either battle it out on ground level or go outside and take advantage of sunlight and fresh air while they’re at it.
Benefits Of Step Challenge For Employees
The benefits of incorporating this kind of activity in the workplace:
- Employees will feel more energized during the day
- Stress levels will go down
- It’s a great activity to do with your co-workers, which can help employees feel more connected and happier in the workplace.
- The fresh air and sunlight you get from walking outside for part of the time is great for everyone’s mental health, mood, and overall well being
- Employees may be healthier because they’ll burn more calories and increase their heart rate, which helps weight loss. You could also incorporate healthy snacks as rewards every few weeks to help fuel healthy competition between employees.
- It helps form a sense of community because it encourages people to work together as a team or compete against each other for that trophy.
- It can help improve mood because employees will feel better about themselves since they’re more active throughout the day, which is also seen as good for everyone’s mental health and well-being overall.
- You’ll see happier employees who are willing to come into work early or stay late without feeling so annoyed by their job at times. 4. Employee turnover might go down if you encourage them to participate together with this activity since it can help build community and trust among their co-workers.
Ways that you can make this more fun, like with an office competition or outside activities:
Benefits For Organization
- Employees who are happier with what they do at work tend to have a lower turnover rate, which means they’re less likely to leave the company
- When employees feel supported by one another it produces a positive environment which can help boost feelings of happiness and well-being.
- Having a lower turnover rate means your company will have to spend less money on recruitment, not just for employees but also during the training period which you’ll have to go through before they’re ready for the job. Having an office competition every week or month is a great way to keep employees engaged and enthusiastic about doing what they do.
Promote Step Challenge With These Ideas
Instead of having everyone compete at ground level, you could make it interesting by giving them different sets of stairs in their building as their “main” location instead. The winner would be whoever takes the most steps on those stairs over a specific time period (for example, 1 hour). It’s a great competition that can help improve employee morale and overall office culture. You could also give out prizes, like box seats to your company picnic, to the winner and runner up. Or you could simply just buy them lunch if it means they’ll keep coming in for more.
- Reward employees every week or month by having a competition between everyone
- The winner gets some type of prize (i.e. lunch catered by your company)
- Take stairs as your main location instead of using ground level
- Rewards should be given out weekly or monthly– 1st place gets something big; 2nd place gets something small but still nice
- Invite everyone outside once per week to get fresh air and sunlight (yet still compete against each other, like who takes the most steps over a certain period of time)
- Encourage employees to take breaks outside as a team every now and then
Steps For Implementing A Step Challenge
You could have everybody compete against each other on the ground level of the office building instead of just out there in the sun. Another way to make this more fun is by having different sets of stairs in the office and basing your steps off of that. Whatever set of stairs you take the most will be your “main” or competitive location. You can also encourage employees to go outside as a team once per week for their step challenge as a way to get fresh air and sunlight without taking too much away from work time.
Here are some steps on how to implement a step challenge in your office environment:
Get The Entire Office Participating
You’ll want to get the entire office on board before you do anything else. Even if you’re the boss, that doesn’t mean that it will happen automatically. You’ll need to get at least the majority of your employees motivated for this to work.
Finish off by writing about Start with one person and build-up.
Create Goals
Once you’ve gotten everyone’s buy-in, create goals for each participant. This is one of the most important steps in the process because it ensures that people are getting out their steps each day and not just once or twice a week when they feel like it.
Start with one person and build up slowly until everyone is on at least two different days. If you’re worried about it being too strenuous. Start off with a couple of minutes at the end of the workday.
Rewards
You’ll want to choose your rewards wisely. If you’re running contests or other types of motivation, make sure that you’re rewarding not only the person who came in first but also others for participating or doing well.
Request daily updates on the number of steps. The more you collect, the better.
Since there is no way to track steps without a special tracker. You’ll need to ask for daily updates on the number of steps. The more you collect, the better.
Have A Leaderboard
A great way to track the progress of a challenge is by having a leaderboard to see where people stand. You can use this as a visual incentive for people to try and catch up with those in front of them. Have a “leaderboard” visible to all employees where they can easily see who is winning throughout the day.
Celebrate
At the end of the week, have a small celebration with cake and prizes to encourage even more participation.
A step challenge is a group activity in which participants compete to take the most steps over a predetermined amount of time. Usually with a winner or winners is determined by an objective criterion such as the number of steps taken or the duration of stepping. Participants use mobile apps and wearable fitness trackers to monitor their progress throughout the competition. And organizations often host events where employees measure their strides against those of fellow team members and company leaders. Step challenges are enjoyed by individuals for exercise and weight loss purposes as well as fun.
- Aim to get over 10 000 steps a day
- Track your progress with apps or wearables
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator
- Go for walks during lunch break, if possible
- Try to take at least one walk outside each day
- Use an app that tracks how many calories you burn while walking or running. This can be used as motivation to keep going.
Incentives
For all those who go above and beyond, provide an additional prize for going above and beyond with your step challenges. We have our employees doing events that last 2 – 3 months long. Just rotate between stairs vs escalator/elevator depending on what is being done at each site. As well as keeping track of daily scores for various games. It has been an extremely fun journey so far. Choosing incentives to implement an office step challenge environment as well as providing some tips on how you can successfully do it.
Competition
In order to create a healthy work environment, it’s been discovered that competition is key. We have our employees doing events that last 2 – 3 months long. Just rotate between stairs vs escalator/elevator depending on what is being done at each site as well as keeping track of daily scores for various games. Incorporate competition into it by having people self-nominate as well as have certain challenges that are completed together. Like climbing stairs vs using an escalator/elevator. It would encourage people to cycle or walk home to win.
The office step challenge is a clever way to encourage your employees to be more physically active. The steps can represent anything from climbing stairs, walking around the building, or just taking the elevator instead of using the escalator. In addition, you want to create an environment that encourages people not only to take these small changes. But also to do their best in meeting goals and deadlines for tasks at work.
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