How to Measure the Results of Your Corporate Sports Challenge

Your CEO does not care how many kilometres your company walked.

They might say they care. They might nod when you show the number. But the decision to fund the next edition isn't made on total steps or distance. It's made on whether the investment produced a business outcome.

This article is about measuring what leadership cares about and presenting it in a way that makes the case for the next challenge.

The six metrics that matter to leadership

There are many things you can measure. These are the six worth reporting.

1. Participation rate

What percentage of eligible employees actively participated? Not “signed up,” but logged at least a handful of activities.

Benchmarks: 60%+ is solid for a first challenge. 75%+ is the target for subsequent editions. Above 80% is excellent. Below 40% signals something went wrong in promotion or positioning.

2. Sustained engagement

What percentage of people who started were still active in the final week?

This separates a real challenge from a one-week event. A challenge with 80% week-one participation and 30% final-week participation failed in the middle stretch. A challenge with 60% sustained participation through week four is working.

Aim for 70%+ of initial participants still active in the last week.

3. Health impact (self-reported)

Not every GP will write you a note, but self-reported outcomes carry real weight with leadership.

Ask in a post-challenge survey: days per week active before vs. after the challenge; whether they took fewer sick days during or after; whether their energy levels improved; whether their overall wellbeing feels better.

Self-reported doesn't mean unreliable. Large samples of honest self-reports form the basis of most public health research. A 200-person company with 150 survey respondents saying they took fewer sick days is a credible business input.

4. Team integration

Did cross-department teams build new connections? This metric justifies wellness spend in companies where “productivity” is hard to pin down.

A one-question survey works: “Do you feel more connected with colleagues from other departments as a result of this challenge?” Use a 1–5 scale and report the percentage answering 4 or 5.

5. Repeat intent

Would participants join another challenge?

This is the leading indicator for whether you should run another one. If 85%+ say yes, you have something worth building on. If it's below 60%, the challenge didn't land, and you need to understand why before investing in edition two.

For context: across Activy challenges, 96% of participants in the 2025 Satisfaction Report (n=9,240) said they wanted to participate again. That's a useful benchmark even if your number will differ.

6. Financial ROI

The metric that gets leadership's attention. Covered in detail below.

Calculating ROI without overclaiming

A defensible ROI calculation doesn't require labour economics expertise. It requires a reasonable model, defensible inputs, and honest caveats.

Cost of the challenge

Add: platform fee; prize budget; internal coordinator time (hours × loaded hourly cost); any promotional production costs.

For a 300-person challenge, total cost typically lands between €3,000 and €15,000 depending on platform tier and prize generosity.

Savings from reduced absenteeism

The input you need: what percentage of participants report fewer sick days, and what a sick day costs.

From the Activy Satisfaction Report 2025, 33% of participants reported fewer sick days. Your company's number may differ. Use your own survey results when you have them.

The cost of a sick day is typically calculated as salary for the day plus a multiplier for lost productivity and replacement cost. €200–€350 is a defensible range in most European markets.

Example calculation for 300 participants at €275/day sick cost: 33% × 300 = 99 employees reporting fewer sick days; conservative assumption: 1 fewer sick day each; 99 × €275 = €27,225 annual savings.

You can footnote this as an estimate based on self-reported outcomes.

Productivity gains

Input: what percentage report higher productivity, and what you assume that's worth. 50% reporting higher productivity is the Activy benchmark. Use your own number when you have one.

For productivity value, a 2% improvement on loaded salary over the challenge period is conservative and defensible.

Example for 300 participants, €50,000 average loaded salary: 50% × 300 = 150 employees; 150 × €50,000 × 2% = €150,000 annualized value.

Environmental impact

An increasingly important metric for ESG-conscious companies: CO2 saved through active commuting.

Employees who cycle or run instead of driving save 0.2–0.3 kg of CO2 per kilometre. Over a four-week challenge, participants logging 500 cycling kilometres collectively save 100–150 kg of CO2. That's a number worth reporting to leadership and ESG committees.

Activy tracks this automatically. If not, estimate: total cycling/running distance × 0.25 kg CO2 per kilometre.

Example for a mixed challenge: 10,000 km cycling logged + 2,000 km running logged = 12,000 total × 0.25 kg = 3 tonnes CO2 saved.

Total financial return

For the 300-person example: roughly €27,000 in absenteeism savings plus €150,000 in productivity value equals €177,000 in annual return against a €5,000–€15,000 cost. That's a 10–30x return.

Use conservative assumptions when you report this. A defensible 5x is better than a hard-to-defend 20x. The goal is to be taken seriously in the budget conversation, not to claim the biggest ROI.

Activy has an ROI calculator that walks through this with your specific company inputs: activy.app/en-us/roi-calculator.

What to track in the app

Your platform should give you:

• Live ranking updates (not weekly), so participants see their position in real time
• Streak tracking (consecutive days of activity earn bonus points)
• Active Minutes logged (WHO-aligned metric)
• CO2 saved by activity type
• Participation and engagement rates by department and team

All of this should be visible to coordinators in a dashboard before, during, and after the challenge.

Post-challenge survey template

Six questions, applicable to any challenge format. Keep it short or people won't complete it.

1. How many days per week were you physically active before the challenge? (0–7 scale)

2. How many days per week are you physically active now? (0–7 scale)

3. Did you take fewer sick days during or shortly after the challenge? (Yes / No / Not sure)

4. Do you feel more connected with colleagues from other departments as a result of the challenge? (1–5 scale)

5. Would you participate in another challenge? (Definitely / Probably / Probably not / No)

6. Rate your overall experience. (1–5 stars)

Optional: “What would you improve next time?” (open text).

Six questions take about 90 seconds to complete. Longer surveys see response rates drop fast.

This data makes the business case for your next challenge. Run the survey within a week of the challenge ending, while the experience is fresh. Close it at two weeks to force timely responses.

Benchmarks to aim for

First-challenge participation. Industry average sits at 40–50%. Activy challenges land between 60% and 80%.

Sustained engagement (final week). Industry average is around 50%. Activy challenges hold above 70%.

Repeat intent. Industry average is around 60%. Activy challenges hit 96%.

NPS (HR Tech average). Industry average is 30–40. Activy challenges score 70 from participants and 75 from coordinators.

Use these as a sanity check, not a target. Your first challenge might land below the Activy averages and still be a success. What matters is trend — edition two should be better than edition one.

How to present results to leadership

One page. Five sections.

Investment. Total cost of the challenge, broken into platform, prizes, and internal time.

Participation. Sign-up rate, active participation rate, sustained engagement rate. One chart.

Health impact. Survey headlines on sick days, activity levels, wellbeing. Include a direct employee quote if you have one.

Team integration. The single survey result on feeling more connected. One percentage.

Financial ROI. The calculation above, with conservative assumptions clearly stated. Include CO2 saved if relevant.

Close the page with one sentence: “Proposing the next challenge for [season].” Give leadership a decision to make, not just information to absorb.

Ready to measure what matters?

Good measurement is what turns a one-off challenge into a recurring programme.

Calculate your ROI to model the financial impact before you pitch it to leadership, or book a 30-minute Activy demo to see the coordinator dashboard and reporting in action.