Tictrac, a global employee wellbeing company, has revealed that its client, BrightGen, has been making the most of its employee health and wellbeing app by incentivising employees to increase their walking activity and raise awareness of ‘116 123’, the Samaritans hotline number.

BrightGen, a technology services Salesforce partner based in the UK has a team of 140+ and is supporting the Samaritans by walking 11,612.3km in honour of its hotline support number (116 123) with the aim of raising £1,161.23 through a JustGiving page. Around 50 team members had signed up for the challenge running over a 6 week period.

Julie Clark, BrightGen’s Head of HR, said: “Samaritans is one of our clients, so we felt it was incredibly important for us to give back to such an amazing organisation, particularly after the last year. For the charity, we hope to raise awareness and much needed funds and, for BrightGen, we want to maintain our fantastic team spirit and ensure we’re all getting outside in the fresh air and exercising”.

BrightGen used Tictrac’s health and wellbeing platform to organise the initiative, making use of team challenges and health advice.

“We’re making use of our health platform to help the Samaritans as well as promote health and wellbeing across our team. We feel it is incredibly important to encourage people to take some time out of the day to walk, run or cycle. The app helps us provide tips on healthy eating, motivation and stress management to ensure everyone is taking good care of themselves. We’re a really competitive team so we’re hoping that the competitive nature of some of the challenges will drive adoption across the company!”

Martin Blinder, CEO and Founder at Tictrac, added: “We love the fact that running, walking or cycling challenges can be used for memorable CSR initiatives like this one. It makes staying active so much more engaging when, so often, it can feel hard for people to get up and keep moving. BrightGenhave created a great way to add fun for an important cause that they are so connected with.

“Individuals or teams can keep a check on their movements too using a fitness tracker or smartphone and then uploaded to a leaderboard. In this way, not only can employees see how close they are to their walking or distance targets against other teams, but employers get a snapshot of employee health across their workforce. We find too that the ability to comment on activity allows teams to talk tactics, share ideas and build competitive spirit.”