Wellbeing initiatives proving to be a success

The Wellbeing Team’s pedometer challenge, now in its 4th year, recently came to a close and it was bigger than ever with 75 teams registering to take part, totalling 375 employees.

The challenge involves using a pedometer to record the number of steps the participants take over an eight week period. The aim behind the challenge is to try to increase the amount of physical activity the participants are doing on a daily basis to hopefully meet the recommendation of 30 minutes of moderate activity on five days of the week. A lot of people, particularly those with jobs that are fairly sedentary are shocked at how little they move each day once they start recording it. Even those who do walk a lot were surprised at how much you need to do to meet the target of 10,000 steps a day.

This year’s challenge had returning teams from previous years as well as debuting teams who made an impact. There were a number of prizes awarded including fruit baskets from CFINE, Active Aberdeenshire memberships, swimming passes and items from Paths for All.

Over the eight weeks the teams walked a total of 222,055,532 steps which is approximately 111,000 miles and 99% of the participants said they would encourage others to take part in a similar challenge in the future.

The winning team were a team of five cleaners from Inverurie who were taking part in the challenge along with a number of other teams from Inverurie Academy.

Earlier in the year the Wellbeing team provided places for Aberdeenshire Council staff at the Run Balmoral event which it has done for many years since the event’s inception in 2007.

The employees who were allocated these places were also supported through the offer of training advice from Mel Edwards, Principle Engineer in Infrastructure Services but who is also a very well respected athletics endurance coach and a former Scottish marathon and cross county international.

This year, a condition of the placement ensured that employees ran for a charity of their choice. Charities supported by council staff included:

Holly Morrison, Health Promotions Officer, said: “In terms of employee wellbeing, the council’s support for employees to participate in events such as Run Balmoral and our own Pedometer Challenge is fantastic. For Run Balmoral, employees can choose which specific event they wish to enter, making this an achievable goal for most as they can set their own target, as well as getting training advice and support from Mel Edwards.

“The Pedometer Challenge promotes making small increases in your activity throughout your day to day life, so it’s an achievable target for most. Aberdeenshire Council has supported its employees to participate in these events for a number of years and each year the demand is there for them.”