How to organize a successful step challenge at work

Step challenges are an excellent way to boost employee wellbeing and bring teams together. They are simple and scalable and offer just the right amount of friendly competition to keep people engaged and motivated to keep moving!

Whether you are just dipping your toe into workplace wellbeing or looking to level up your current program, this guide walks you through exactly how to set up a step challenge that will get your people talking (and walking)!

What is an office step challenge?

An office step challenge is an accessible wellbeing competition that encourages employees to increase their physical activity by tracking their daily steps. They can be run on an individual or team level and can be adapted to suit a diverse range of participants.

While the goal is typically to reach a total step count, challenges can also include progress milestones, daily step targets, mini activity challenges and more. Challenges can really be whatever you make them, and are a fun and energizing way to support your team’s wellbeing – no gym membership required!

Why start a step challenge at work?

Step challenges aren’t all just fun and games; they also offer some fantastic benefits to the workplace.

By creating a shared goal, step challenges give employees something to connect over beyond meetings and emails, helping to build a greater since of community and boost employee engagement. Additionally, whether grouped by department, location, or other, team-based challenges are a great team building exercise as they enable colleagues to work together in their race to the finish.

Step challenges also promote regular movement, which can be hard to maintain in the typical office environment and is a simple and effective way to support both employee wellbeing and productivity. By encouraging short walking breaks throughout the day, these challenges can help employees improve their overall mood, cardiovascular health and cognitive function, while also reducing stress and screen fatigue, and helping to improve focus.

How to organize a team step challenge

Organizing a successful step challenge is easier than it may sound. Want to give it a go? We’ve broken it down into four easy steps to get you started:

1. Define your goals and objectives

It’s important to understand your end goal before you get started. Ask yourself what you are hoping to achieve and use this as a guide when planning your challenge. Is this a one-off activity to coincide with a company event, or is it one part of a larger wellbeing initiative?

2. Choose a tracking method

While pedometers and smart wearable devices like a FitBit or Apple Watch are the best methods for capturing step counts, choosing a tracking method is key for making sure your challenge goes off without a hitch. This is how you will measure engagement, track participants, and determine your winner(s) at the end of the day, so you want to make sure you select a method that’s right for you.

Some companies opt for manual tracking, using spreadsheets to collect self-reported step counts from participants. This option is both simple and budget-friendly; however, it does require extra admin time and trust in participants to run.

A more seamless option for running a step challenge would be using a wellbeing platform. Capable of syncing with wearable devices, platforms like Wellbeing+ take step counts and track progress over time, while also offering different solutions to bring challenges to life. With leaderboards, virtual race maps, community chats, and more, wellbeing platforms enable you to not only run a step challenge but fairly measure participant inputs and connect with and build community within the workplace all at once.

3. Set clear milestones and challenges

Once your tracking method is defined, it is time to decide what kind of challenge you want to run and to determine how to keep your people engaged. One of the best approaches is to set milestones throughout the challenge. Sometimes a large step target can be daunting, so why not break it into something easier to swallow? These checkpoints help participants monitor their progress and can be a fun way to motivate participants to keep up their momentum. You can also choose to boost your step challenge with other mini challenges to keep things interesting and support wellbeing on a wider level.

4. Track and measure progress

Once the challenge is live, all that’s left is to track and measure your participants throughout the challenge and keep them engaged! Visibility is a great motivator, so post those leaderboards, share updates, and celebrate milestones.

Pro tip: real-time dashboards on platforms like Wellbeing+ make this last step super simple.

Step challenge ideas to encourage participation

No matter how fun your challenge may be, getting strong participation can sometimes be tricky. To help you out, we’ve compiled some of our best practices for starting an office step challenge below:

Promote Inclusivity: Everyone wants to feel challenged, but not to the point that the goal is out of reach. Make sure your challenge goals are realistic and accessible for all fitness levels. Consider using an activity converter to allow participants to log steps for time spent moving in different ways, or take on a Streak challenge structure that allows users to set a personal goal to reach each day.

Use some friendly competition: Whether you have small teams, departments, or regional offices stepping against each other, we all know there’s nothing quite like bragging rights! A bit of competition is a great way to help build team spirit and keep people engaged and motivated to win.

Incorporate gamification and rewards: Add energy to your challenge by incorporating gamified elements like progress milestones, mini-challenges, or digital leaderboards. These interactive features help keep participants engaged, motivated, and focused on their goals. Consider offering prizes to celebrate top performers or most improved participants – these tangible rewards add excitement and give people something to strive for. Need ideas? Try some of these!

Shout about it!: Communication goes a long way, so don’t just share one announcement to kick off your step challenge and call it a day. We recommend posting before, during and after a challenge to build excitement, maintain interest, and share the results and best moments to drive home the challenge’s impact. We don’t care if you use email, slack, or good old-fashioned flyers – whatever reaches your people is best!

Make it a part of your larger wellbeing strategy: Instead of treating your step challenge as a standalone event, integrate it into your year-round initiatives to reinforce your company's ongoing commitment to employee wellbeing.

Gather feedback and iterate: There is always room for improvement, so go to the source: Ask your people for insights! Understanding what worked and what could be better is key for running future events and, better yet, when people see their feedback in action, it can build trust and increase participation.

Step up your office wellbeing strategy with Reward Gateway | Edenred

A step challenge is a great entry point into building a more connected and energized workplace, and with the right tools, it can become a consistent and meaningful part of your employee experience. Reward Gateway | Edenred’s Wellbeing+ app makes it easy to create, launch and manage step challenges while keeping teams engaged and involved. Offering seamless integration with multiple step-tracking devices, built-in communications and a wide range of fun and exciting challenge modules and goal setting tools, Wellbeing+ supports a more vibrant and connected work culture - no matter your company size or structure.

Schedule a demo to learn more about how Reward Gateway | Edenred can breathe new life into your employee wellbeing program with Wellbeing+!