In their efforts to promote wellness in the workplace, the Employee Wellness Division of the University of the Free State introduced the “Healthy4Health” Pedometer Challenge 2019, challenging all employees of the North-West University (NWU) to take part.

This challenge has been designed to get employees more physically active and ultimately improve their health. According to Kovsies’ Arina Engelbrecht, the advantages of regular physical activity include a reduced risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and stress.

Prof Hanlie Moss, research director of the NWU’s research focus area for Physical Activity, Sport and Recreation, accepted the challenge on behalf of the NWU. She invites all staff on all three campuses to participate. “This campaign will help employees to realise the benefits of reduced health risks and position universities to experience improved productivity, lower medical costs and reduced number of days off sick,” explains Prof Moss. “We therefore urge you to take part in this Healthy4Life Pedometer challenge.”

The challenge will kick off on Tuesday 9 April at 13:00 during the official launch at the Purple Cherry Coffee Shop next to the High Performance Institute. The benefits of the previous year’s challenge will be explained and then the 2019 challenge will start with a 30 minute walk.

Objectives of the pedometer challenge:
•    Increased awareness on the importance of physical activity for health benefits.
•    Increased physical activity participation at the workplace.
•    Improve morale and greater job satisfaction.
•    Team building.

Last year, the NWU entered 30 teams to compete against Kovsies’ 60 teams. Between the two universities, approximately 132 000 km were logged over the 10 week challenge.

The 2019 challenge:
This uear the University of Stellenbosch, Central University of Technology (CUT), the University of the Free State and the NWU will be competing to be crowned as the university that logged the most kilometers.  

This eight-week walking/running challenge will encourage participants to reach the goal of at least 35 kilometers of walking or running per week, including weekends. The university that log the most kilometers during the eight weeks, will be crowned as the “fittest walking/running university”, referring to staff members.

This year’s aim is to log a total of 200 000 km. BESTMED is the sponsor of the challenge and winning teams of each university will receive 4 X R500 vouchers. The second-runners up will receive 4x R250 vouchers, and each participant will receive a medal.

But you need to hurry up, because entries close on 5 April!   

How to get involved?
It’s great fun, and it’s easy to organise:
•    A team consists of four employees. A team captain is chosen by the members.
•    The role of a team captain is to motivate his/her teams weekly and log the distance of the team members.
•    The link will be provided to log the team’s total kilometres.
•    Every participant record the number of steps/km taken daily at their own time (Monitored by own pedometer or app on phone).
•    Weekly totals must be submitted to the team captain, who will submit distance on the log provided by the challenge coordinator, Arina Engelbrecht.

Click on the interactive invitation below where you can enter the challenge. For any enquiries, please contact Prof Hanlie Moss on hanlie.moss@nwu.ac.za.