Take a Walk!

There’s a wonderful, simple team-building program you can easily create. It was brought to my attention recently during a conversation in Sydney with Melanie Pike. She works in the Australian government department that leads the country’s Antarctic program.

Melanie said that to build morale, get staff to talk with each other (instead of emailing within the office) and to improve wellbeing management came up with the idea of grouping staff in teams and running a contest to see which team would be the first to walk the distance between the Australian Antarctic territories.

No, they weren’t sent out to the frozen south. Everyone was given a T-shirt and a pedometer. The team to first walk the distance would be the winner. Thirty people initially joined. Even those that were initially negative or who had pooh-poohed the idea got into the spirit. Currently there are 70 participating.

The positive effects from the program that Melanie and the executive team noticed:

• Turned workplace “strangers” into mates
• Got staff talking with each other
• Built morale and spirit along with a dose of competitiveness
• Gave staff a motivational and positive focal point to work towards collectively
• Improved health and wellbeing

Here are four tips to help make this idea work for you.

1. Pick a measurable, quantifiable goal. Walk the distance around Australia (collectively). Your state. Your city.
2. Mix fitness levels between teams for fairness.
3. Create a simple Excel chart to visually stimulate team competitiveness and show percentage of the goal completed.
4. The reward can be for the team or the charity of their choice — or everyone can walk to earn for a charity.