Sport is more than competition!

We all need some motivation now and then. With so much on our plates, carving out even an hour a day to cover a longer distance can be hard. To make it easier for our employees to be physically active, we created the Xebia Active sports initiative - Karolina Łagodzińska, challenge coordinator

Summary

This wasn't the first time Xebia employees in Poland took part in the challenge. They did it before under the orange banner of PGS Software. After the merger with the global Xebia brand they took on new colours, but the energy for sport stayed the same!
An extra argument and motivator for joining was that the initiative was combined with a charity goal. So what is the initiative all about?

Xebia Active is about collecting kilometres or steps. Last year it was held for the third time. Each edition looked a little different.

For the first two years we collected kilometres that our employees covered running, cycling or walking. Last year we collected only steps.
For two years now we've been using the Activy app to run the initiative. It lets our employees add activities and follow rankings and statistics in real time. It's also an extra communication platform we use while the initiative is running - Karolina Łagodzińska

Preparations

Work on the initiative began several months before the start. Besides Xebia's Employer Branding team, people from Activy were also involved in developing the concept. Together they looked at what the app can do and matched it to the company's internal needs.

We wanted the initiative to be open to all employees, whatever their level of physical activity. That's why we chose collecting steps. These days almost every smartphone has a built-in app that counts daily steps.
We decided to make use of that. Once we were sure collecting steps was the right choice, we started working on the concept and the charity goal. The natural choice was buying shoes for children from the children's homes we work with
- sums up Katarzyna Tecław, co-organiser of the challenge.

After defining the goals, setting the assumptions and choosing the charity goal, it was time to create a communication plan designed to keep employees engaged for 3 months.

To achieve this, extra challenges were woven into the initiative. Xebia employees received prizes for covering certain distances or completing special activities.

In the first month, participants took photos with company gadgets during their activities and posted them in the app. In the next month, reaching a set distance unlocked fun facts about the company's history. In the last month, they took part in a challenge to draw patterns and shapes on the map with their GPS track.

The next step in the preparations was designing the app, personalising the shop for participants and creating teams based on locations and technologies, together with the project coordinator on Activy's side.

The challenge

The initial idea seemed simple: each participant was to collect one million steps in the app over the 3 months of the initiative. One million steps meant one pair of shoes bought by Xebia for a children's home. On a daily average, that came to about 10,000 steps.

The initiative was meant to be a challenge, so we chose this number in line with World Health Organization guidelines. We knew that with remote work, which is possible in our company, it could be demanding - comments Karolina, the project coordinator on Xebia's side.

After two weeks it turned out that one million steps per person was too ambitious a goal.

The charity concept based on reaching a million steps was the first step-based initiative of its kind run in the app. Together with Activy, we decided to use new technological solutions and were prepared for possible changes along the way.
When we noticed that our original plan wasn't working, we quickly decided to change the strategy. We focused on making sure everyone could contribute to the shared goal and add to the common pool, regardless of individual results
- adds Karolina.

From that moment on, everyone had one shared goal: to take as many steps as possible together.

Before the challenge I exercised on my own. I'm a lone wolf when it comes to that. But there is something else that drives me: competing with my colleagues from work. Although in general I don't need extra motivation to exercise, taking part in company challenges is an extra push and gives me energy. In situations like this, competing with colleagues matters more than the results themselves
- challenge participant

‍

In the end, the total number of millions guaranteed the purchase of shoes for children from children's homes. To recognise the most active participants, people with a million steps on their account were to receive an extra prize.

The final goal of the initiative: every million collected together is a pair of shoes for children in a children's home.‍

Employees welcomed the changes, and the statistics started climbing!

Results

Many factors contributed to the success of the initiative, including:

1. The gadget shop, introduced as something new compared with the previous edition of the challenge. All activities, including steps, were converted into points.  

2. Besides collecting steps, participants could choose the sports they were most interested in. Not all activities counted towards the step statistics, so earning points in other sports such as cycling, workouts or running let participants collect Active coins. These could be exchanged in the in-app shop for company gadgets such as sports water bottles, beach balls or sunglasses.

3. To raise the level of competition, participants could win top-ups for their pyszne.pl food delivery accounts in extra contests and challenges. It's a proven solution that Xebia uses, for example, when organising team events for project teams. Each month had a separate theme:

- Photo contest: participants had to take a photo during a sports activity with Nancy, a rubber duck with the company logo.

- Discovering fun facts from the company's history: after passing a chosen activity threshold, participants received interesting stories from the life of the company.‍

- GPS track map: participants created shapes on the map with the track they left during an activity.

The most interesting entries won, and the gadget shop was almost completely sold out. Participants were keen to earn points and exchange them for prizes.

In the end the project was a success: participants took over 125 million steps! Xebia decided to add a few more pairs of shoes, and in the end as many as 132 pairs of shoes went to the children.

Employees were happy with both the results and the prizes they won. After the initiative ended we ran a satisfaction survey, and employees who used the app agreed on how attractive the app and its features are.

We also asked how the change of goal during the challenge affected them, and the answers were unanimous: changing the goal increased their motivation to be active. But as they stressed, what gave them the most satisfaction was reaching the charity goal.

Knowing that every step helps made them follow what was happening in the challenge every day and actively contribute to reaching the goal. On the social board in the app they supported each other by commenting, liking and posting photos from their workouts. It was more than just a challenge: it was a real show of teamwork!

Watching challenge participants motivate each other in chats by the coffee machine and celebrate every million steps reached was an amazing experience. In the post-challenge survey we got lots of comments saying the initiative helped our employees get motivated and get off the proverbial couch. Many of them don't sit on it as long as they did before the challenge
- challenge coordinators Karolina Łagodzińska and Katarzyna Tecław