The Lumera-paceUP! Challenge 2021 was five weeks packed with great fun and hard work. It turned out to be a great success with more employees competing and more activity points collected than the previous year. Activities logged included running, weightlifting, boxing, and dog walking. This further illustrates why the diversity of activities makes paceUP! health challenges unique - all types of exercise count!
Together the teams exercised for 35 days, collected 2,100,776 points and travelled an impressive 20,703 km - more than half-way around the equator! The winning team, “Team Pannben,” collected an incredible 25,774 activity points!
Lumera combined its health challenge with a charity challenge. This means the activity points were converted into a charity donation. Together the teams reached the Gold Level and raised 20,000 SEK, which was equally split between the organizations VidDinSida and Norwegian Kirkens Bymisjon.
VidDinSida is a Swedish non-profit organization that makes a difference for elderly homeless senior citizens and Norwegian Kirkens Bymisjon is a non-profit organization that works in cities all over Norway to provide social services and care for all types of people.
Consulting Manager Massimo Mondini at Vitec was the one who set up the initiative. He tells about how it happened:
– A colleague of mine suggested the paceUP! app and after a quick evaluation we found the timing to be perfect for this type of activity. A paceUP! activity can range from a yoga session or long walk, to an intense spinning session. This meant that everyone could participate and get active with the activity of their choice.
As employees earned paceUP! points in the app, their progress was converted into charity donations. The different groups competed against each other and the winning team with the highest average score had the honor of choosing a charity organization for the donation.
– Promoting regular exercise is extra important, especially when working remotely made us even more sedentary. During the company challenge people increased their exercise level - regardless of whether they worked out regularly before the challenge or not.
– We chose to run the challenge for 1.5 months, which felt right for us. The advantage of a slightly longer challenge is that you allow time for employees to create a routine around exercising.
– 109 out of 140 employees participated, which is a fantastic turn-out! Maybe it was the charity goal that created such a great commitment. Or maybe it was simply competing to become the department with the highest average score. One thing is for sure - it was a lot of exercising! We almost doubled our original goal of a daily 30-minute walk.
– In terms of distance, it was 27,012 km, which is the equivalent to 2/3 of the distance around the globe. It took us 5,500 hours of exercise to achieve this!
– It was an exciting competition all the way to the end. Our management team pulled away early and appeared to be the sure victors. But a couple of departments stepped it up in the end and after an incredibly exciting sprint on the final day, "Sales & Marketing" stole the win. An impressive achievement for this underdog team!
But the big winners are really everyone at Vitec who got excited about exercising more. That was our overall intention of this wellness initiative.
The winning team was awarded all the donations to go to a charity of their choice. The total was 20,000 SEK which the winning team chose to distribute between the Brain Foundation and the Cancer Foundation.
The challenge was designed based on BMW's company branding and was named "Move with Joy.” The aim was to get employees to move more after a period when Covid made sedentary work from home the norm. Twelve teams challenged each other to an activity competition where all forms of physical fitness counted. Employees at BMW engaged in everything from paddling, walking, running, yoga, and even golf.
- The concept has been great fun and very much appreciated by the participants, says Emma Pettersson, HR at BMW Northern Europe.
Watch BMW's own video packed with energy and joy for exercise. Let’s go!
