Would you participate?

[k3am]

We have a new wellness initiative at work. The company is split into teams and encouraged to get more movement in. You can log manually but are highly encouraged to sync your device for automated tracking. There will be unspecified prizes.

Are you the type of person who would sign up to participate?

[followyourarrow]

I voted yes, but knowing what prizes there are would be more encouraging.

[CurlyQ284]

Yeah, I walk 3 miles with my dog every day so it would be a might as well thing for me.

[beerlover]

I would.

[cereal K]

Maybe the prizes would sway me, but I probably wouldn't sync my device to a work group. Not that it's all that private, but I don't like it. Maybe I would manually write it out, since it would be on my device though. I don't know. They'd have to be good prizes at all levels, bc I'm not super active, so I'm not gonna be breaking records.

[DotAndBuzz]

voted no, but if I had a group of friends at work who were into it, I could see myself being peer pressured to join, lol.

[plutosmoon]

I have done this. One year they actually gave out fitbits. We get a cash incentive otherwise I probably wouldn't.

[glw]

No, but I am very non-competitive so these types of things are not an incentive to me.

[circa1978]

I voted no because there is often a challenge like that going on in my workplace and I've never been motivated to join. I've also seen it get weirdly political and I don't need to get my heart rate up through questioning if Brenda in accounting is scamming the pedometer somehow and if it is unfair for a group to form that is made up entirely of marathon runners. If those examples seem oddly specific, well...

[rhian]

Maybe. For me, it would depend on how the program was framed and talked about. If there were a lot of shaming around people who are less physically active or fatphobia going on, I wouldn't participate.

[nicolewi]

I voted no. It just feels weird to me to have work monitor my physical activity. That said, typically I'm a "joiner" type and I might have happily done it while I was actually working when I was younger and less cranky about these things.

[rachers]

I would maybe participate but I wouldn't feel comfortable with automatic tracking. And it would depend on how they framed it - no weight loss or anything geared towards that. AskaManager just had an article about this that made a lot of sense.

[Patsy Baloney]

At my old (large) workplace we did a fall 5k/Walktober challenge that was hugely popular. It had an App. You put in your general activity level and it gave you a step goal. If you met it, a little graphic of a tree got a red leaf, if you exceeded it by 2k, you got an orange leaf, if you blew it away by 4K, you got a gold leaf. You made your little office teams and had leaderboards, but the tree was the most motivating to me. I wanted a pretty fall tree!

Anyway, it was so popular, they did it again in the spring with a hibiscus vine.

That type of stuff is fun, but there were sooooo many people participating, it would have been really stupid to be competitive at all.

ETA: all prizes were drawn from a pool of all participants

[bee20]

My old company gave us a $100 Amazon card so long as we logged one entry per week in the 10 week challenge. Activities included "mowing the lawn" or "housework", but you could also record running, swimming, walking, etc. Heck yes I logged 10 activities for $100.

You could optionally link a fit-bit, which would do the logging for you, but I chose not to. I also didn't really try hard to win, I never was going to anyway, but I was just in it for the basic prize. So long as there was a prize for all participants I wouldn't mind logging from my own device. If it was only a competition, I wouldn't want to participate, I know I'm not the most active person in my office. We have people who live out of their vans and ski or hike or rock climb for hours a day.

[wildrice]

I don't know - probably not unless there were prizes for participation vs prizes for distance or number of minutes or whatever. Like I guess I'd be ok if it was something like "log 5000 steps a day for 30 days" or something fairly easy to achieve with a bit of effort, but if it was something like "the team with the most minutes wins a prize" I would probably intentionally NOT join because I wouldn't want to bring others down.

[waverly]

I did this once with manual tracking because they gave out free gym membership during the time. There were no prizes that I remember at the end.

I dislike the idea of synced tracking. I also ran a program like this once and probably about 10 years ago. I discontinued the program because there was no evidence that it improved health. After Covid and asking employees about Covid symptoms, quarantining people for over 2 years, I have zero interest in the health of my employees. I mean I wish them well and healthy lives, but I don't want to know any details about their health.

[wanderingback]

My work has this specifically for tracking steps. I’ve signed up in the past. I think I won a $50 gift card once for being in the top 5.

Eta: they do this along with other things like for a couple of months on Wednesdays for an hour they have "wellness events" so there’s virtual chair yoga, Zumba, etc. So it’s not just an isolated thing to track steps.

[dontlook]

Yes. I worked in HR and we usually ran the programs. It made sense to join.

[sadlebred]

I do it at my company because we get a cash incentive up to $X.

[jane6672]

I have done this in the past, I declined to link my device because it was going to get access to ALL my data (sleep, heart rate, etc) not just my step count.


We did have a Brenda in accounting cheating situation though, and not very well either. She’d enter exactly round numbers for each day like “14,000 steps” right at the end of the week that always ended up being just enough to beat the other challenger for the week.

I never understood why, because you were entered for some nominal prize for participating, but you didn’t win anything for winning. Why, Brenda, why??

[jane6672]

We also have an annual health quiz that if you fill it out they put some extra money in your HSA.

It is incredibly detailed and intrusive, and while the 3rd party they use claims they don’t share the data with our employer I don’t believe them, so I lie about a bunch of things.

[RoxMonster]

No, I don't join stuff like this. My work had one in March where you could do it individually or in a group of 4. You manually tracked your "exercise hours" and didn't sync your device, but it's just not my thing. If I did anything like that, I'd want to enter individually so I wouldn't worry about bringing my team down or feeling pressured by team members. But I just chose not to participate at all.

[eb777888]

I would at this time because I feel I'd have a good chance of winning. It really depends on how I'm feeling at the time, like I wouldn't start something like this over the holidays.

[dochas]

No. People cheat and I can't let it go.

[rubytue]

Apr 26, 2024 15:06:38 GMT -5 nicolewi said:

I voted no. It just feels weird to me to have work monitor my physical activity. That said, typically I'm a "joiner" type and I might have happily done it while I was actually working when I was younger and less cranky about these things.

Yeah, I’m here I think. They have done these where I work a couple times, and I’ve never participated, even though just my regular activity would be at least average. I don’t need my employer keeping track of my steps. And one time, one of the supervisors in my group got very irritated at people who were walking laps around a rough loop of our building. 

[konapoppy]

I find these things incredibly demotivating.

But others find it very motivating! Nothing works for everyone.

[VillainV]

Stuff like this really triggers my compulsive exercise tendency, so I wouldn’t participate at all. Hell no to syncing my data to a website for tracking or whatever.

[wanderlustmom]

Yes I would do it because I love to exercise and am competitive but I would rather not have my data tracked. And I would never want it about weight.

[livinitup]

I did it once at work when it was a very specific type of person leading the charge who I had high trust in and she used a very generic leader board - not connected to a health insurance provider or anything like that.

And the leader-person was very authentic in her desire to help regular folks form healthy habits. She was not on a power trip. The leadership didn’t care at all. And it was extremely voluntary. We basically wanted to support the person running it, not the company with a fake wellness goal. Plus, she did different things a few times a year, so activity was just one theme in many.

I was annoyed that the “counting” period ended the day before I toured a college campus and walked a million miles.

[dexteroni]

I do respond well to external incentives when it comes to exercise. But it would depend on how it was set up, how the prizes were awarded, and what the prizes were.

If it’s a competition where only the people who exercise most win, I wouldn’t join that. It promotes unhealthy goals and that wouldn’t be a good incentive for me.

But if there are prizes for achieving exercise thresholds, then maybe. My DH’s employer used to offer discounts on health insurance premiums for various health incentives, and if you chose to log your steps, there were different discount amounts for 5000, 7500, and 10k steps. I liked that because each person could stop wherever they felt comfortable.

As far as prizes, cash or GCs would work the best for me. If it’s stuff like trophies or company merch, forget it.

ETA: And I get that some people might not be comfortable having their trackers monitored, I probably wouldn’t join an honor system contest because people cheat.

ETA2: Thinking more about it, I wouldn’t be crazy about the team format either. I don’t want to feel pressured to do more than I’m comfortable with, or push myself only to miss out on prizes because my slacker teammates didn’t do their part. It's school group projects all over again. That would ruin it for me. So going only by the info presented in the OP, I probably wouldn’t join this particular campaign.