City of London Corporation

The City of London Corporation is a uniquely diverse organisation positioned in the heart of London. The City Corporation’s aim is to support and promote London as a world-leading financial and business centre.

They work in partnership with local communities to increase skills, employment and opportunities, as well as enhancing the capital as a culture and historical hub. They also manage three markets, five bridges on the Thames (including Tower Bridge) and maintain 11,000 acres of green spaces across London all for the benefit of residents, workers and visitors to London.

The City Corporation’s beautiful and iconic Guildhall, originally completed in 1440, remains the civic and ceremonial headquarters of the City of London.

The problem

In late 2016 the City Corporation  was looking for a new way to promote more physical activity in the workplace and nurture healthy habits throughout its workforce.

Rebecca Abrahams, Wellbeing Project Officer commented “we were looking for a fresh approach to keeping our employees healthy, incentivising movement and tackling physical inactivity in the office”.

With up to eight floors of stairs in the building there was real opportunity to promote stair climbing within the building and create an active building for the future.

What happened?

In November 2016, StepJockey smart signs were installed throughout the stairwells of the Guildhall to direct staff to use the stairs as part of a healthy daily routine. The launch of the signage saw an instant increase in activity on the stairs but this was dramatically boosted in the New Year by the launch of the City Corporation’s first stair climbing challenge.

We worked with the City of London Corporation to launch the Climb Everest Stair Climbing Challenge to employees across the organisation. The aim was to get employees to collectively climb to the summit of Mount Everest from the comfort of their office stairs.

After a short two week promotional period, over 100 employees had downloaded the app and chosen to take part in the initiative. In addition to Guildhall, employees took part across multiple sites, with teams in satellite offices as far as Epping Forest joining the challenge by printing their own StepJockey signs locally.

The results

By the end of the challenge 132 players had signed up in 38 teams. Employees successfully climbed to the summit of Mount Everest in just four weeks and together took over 1 million steps in the process. As a result of taking part in the challenge 93,300 calories were burned on the stairs.

Paul Nuki, StepJockey co-founder and CEO, commented “The City of London Corporation have made a real and lasting impact on staff behaviour. It has been great to see so many staff join the challenge and engagement grow throughout the challenge”.

At the end of the challenge a survey was sent to all staff to gauge their feelings towards the initiative and the impact it has had on their health. The results showed that 90% of staff were now using the stairs more frequently and 65% felt it had a positive impact on their personal health. There was also a strong appetite for more challenges with over 90% of players asking for another challenge.

The good news doesn’t stop there. As well as feeling more active and healthy staff who took part noted that the stairs had become a social hub of activity providing great opportunities to catch up with colleagues they don’t often get the chance to interact with.

One player in the challenge commented “Not only did it spur me to use the stairs more, it also encouraged me to leave the office at lunchtimes for a proper break. It was great to see people on the stairs and the atmosphere while competitive was friendly! "                                                    

What the client said

It has been great to see the positive response to the StepJockey initiative and most importantly the changing attitude towards using the stairs to stay active at work.

Our employees really engaged with the StepJockey challenge and it created a wonderful atmosphere within the building. We’re keen to keep up the momentum, build on the numbers and motivate even more staff to stay healthy on the stairs

Rebecca Abrahams, Wellbeing Project Officer, City of London Corporation