Keeping colleagues motivated and managing a healthy work life balance is the challenge facing lots of managers, but 200 Metro Bank colleagues were so engaged by an Olympic style challenge – Road to Tokyo - they have exercised over 12,000 miles in just 30 days.
In June, the UK’s community bank, Metro Bank, issued an Olympics inspired challenge to colleagues to complete 5,938 miles of exercise – the distance between London and Tokyo. Metro Bank colleagues were given an equivalent step count per mile/time and could then clock the mileage achieved through a range of different exercises including walking, cycling, running, swimming, meditating, playing sports or gym workouts. The challenge was designed to encourage colleagues to take a break from their laptops and boost their mental health with an exercise challenge.
Over 200 colleagues signed up to take part tracking their progress and submitting their weekly performance which was shared so everyone in the team could see their combined progress. The challenge was so inspirational and successful that in just 30 days the participants clocked up a staggering 12,975 miles with the winning team, completing an impressive 8,585 miles.
Reconciliations team leader, Paulette Crader added “We are very proud to have participated in this challenge. This experience brought us closer as a team. It took a lot of hard work to make it to first place in the challenge. It was uplifting to see colleagues motivate each other daily, walking around the office during breaks and even doing squats during team meetings.”
“We are very proud to have taken up such a brilliant initiative. The first half of the year was tough and this challenge caught everyone’s imagination,’ explains Metro Bank’s payment operations manager, Andrew Crawford. “In the beginning, I was worried about the level of engagement we were going to have considering the different ways in which colleagues have been impacted through the COVID19 pandemic. To my surprise, I was positively overwhelmed with the levels of engagement after the first week of the challenge. A massive thank you to all the colleagues who participated. We hope to inspire even more colleagues with our next challenge.”