How do you run around the world without taking a day off from work? Office fitness challenges are gaining followers at India Inc.
Lunch hour for Rohit Ambosta is a busy hour. The 39-year-old is Chief Information Officer at Financial Technology India Ltd., a Chakala-based financial solutions firm. Every day at 1 pm he is on company order to take a walk.
Top: Manoj Shetty, Kannan V, Rohit Ambosta, Nilesh Shetty and Mahesh Parihar with their pedometers during their post-lunch Stepathlon walk. Instead of 10,000 steps a day, the guys from Financial Technology India Ltd. clock in 40,000 on weekdays and 60,000 on weekends, all to win (Above)
In September, the firm signed up for Stepathlon, a global initiative to improve fitness among working professionals through a virtual walking race. With it, Ambosta’s firm joined HDFC Bank, Mahindra Group, Wockhardt, TATA Steel, Deutsche Bank in India and ANZ, Toyota, Bloomberg and Sony across the world.
Every organisation that signs up for the 100-day challenge that Stepathlon poses must establish teams within the company. And every member must walk at least 10,000 steps a day, the minimum requirement for a healthy person, according to research. A sedentary person usually averages between 2,000 and 3,000 steps to get around.
Ambosta and his team of financial analysts – Manoj Shetty, Mahesh Parihar, Kannan V and Nilesh Shetty – call their team Carpe Diem. While the other four teams in office took up the challenge to keep active, staying true to its name, Carpe Diem is going for the win. “Instead of 10,000, we clock in 40,000 steps a day during the week and 60,000 on weekends,” he says.
Launched in 2012, Stepathlon saw 21,237 participants from 143 companies in the first year. This time, 60,000 step-athletes from 350 companies are competing. The winning firm will walk away with the title of Most Active Company.
Once an organisation signs up (individuals can’t participate), it must sponsor every Stepathelete for Rs 2,250. This amount buys every employee a pedometer, a device that counts steps by detecting hip motion. The device must be carried on person at all times. They are also given log-in details to update their step-count every day.
The plan
A week before they took on the challenge, Ambosta and his team went through a trial run for a week, mapping walkable roads around home and office, measuring step to distance count and timings to plan their routes. Since the race began, each member of the team walks 30 km a day.
Ambosta’s day starts at 5 am with a walk that winds up at 7.30 am. This earns him 15,000 steps. This is followed by 30 minutes at the gym (3,600 steps), a 30-minute post lunch walk (7,000 steps) and an evening stroll (4,000 steps). He hits the gym once he’s home and makes up for the difference with an hour-long walk after dinner. “If work is hectic and I can’t make it for the evening walk, I walk home from Ghatkopar station instead of taking a rickshaw. That’s a good 6,000 steps,” he explains. To increase his step-count, Ambosta has shunned rice and lost 2.5 kg since he began.
On weekends, the team meets at Kandivali from where they make their way to Borivali National Park, giving their grand total a massive bump of 32,000 steps each.
“Walking in the mall can also rake in steps. I usually take my threeyear-old daughter, Aria to the mall on Sundays. It may not seem like a high-activity trip, but it is,” he says.
The game maker
Stepathlon co-founder Ravi Krishnan launched the idea with Australian nutrition expert Shane Bilsborough, and raked in revenue worth Rs 6 cr in the first year. Competition, he explains, is something the average person — fit or unfit — values. “Competition can work as catalyst for creating sustainable behaviour. Healthy competition also births an element of fun, which is critical to habitual change,” he says.
It seems to have worked for Ambosta, who plans to run 42 kms at the Mumbai Marathon in December.
He has been tracking his progress on an interactive web interface, also available as a mobile app. For the race, Krishnan’s team converts steps into kilometres to help map a participant’s journey on a set virtual map that takes into account participants from across the globe. Carpe Diem ranks number 2 in the world, a quick second to HDFC bank.
In 100 days, participants who maintained their step-count will complete in the race. Ambosta’s team will possibly do it sooner.
Why firms invest
According to research published in the Harvard Business Review, a comprehensive, strategically designed investment in employees’ social, mental and physical health pays off. Johnson & Johnson, one of the first to initiate a programme like this in 1995, estimates that wellness programmes have cumulatively saved the company $250 million on health care costs over the past decade; from 2002 to 2008, the return was $2.71 for every dollar spent.
On the project website, Ajay Srinivasan chief executive, financial services at Aditya Birla Group, says, “Exercise sets off a different rhythm in people and therefore, it will improve productivity. It should lead to lower absenteeism. But most importantly, it will lead to greater bonding. And all of that is going to be good for corporates.”
When posed the question, executive director at Nielsen India, Sheen Sunny Akkara says staying fit helps employees dial-up and dial-down. Which is why even senior management is encouraged to take up a sport, and the effort is discussed in the office newsletter.
Akkara’s idea is supported by a study conducted by Towers Watson and the National Business Group. If a CEO makes time for exercise, his juniors are not as self-conscious about taking a fitness break, it says.
Two years ago, Nielsen, an information and insight provider, which encourages its staff to design its own work hours, appointed chief wellness officers from those who volunteered for the post. CWOs interact with their colleagues and initiate fitness projects, accordingly.
The Biggest Loser challenge currently on at the firm is the brainchild of this wellness counsel. Like its television counterpart, the contest encourages participants looking to lose weight to gang up into teams of five and fight fat. The annual pan-India challenge lasts nine months, during which nutritionists, fitness trainers and aerobics instructors visit Nielsen offices to hold training sessions on losing inches wisely.
For Kimberly Pereira, a 26-year-old senior executive, it was just the push she needed. “I was procrastinating, making excuses to delay drafting a plan. With the challenge, I was able to seek necessary information and resources right in my workspace,” says last year’s winner.
Pereira lost 15 kg in seven months. She was competing against 50 participants from Mumbai and 150 across India. Her prize: a wellness hamper that included health foods, free medical checkups and a subscription to a health magazine so she could continue her fitness journey.
Pereira also made it to the in-house newsletter. She now often has colleagues drop by at her work station looking for tips.
Senior executive Kimberly Pereira, last year’s The Biggest Loser winner, lost 15 kg in 7 months, and came out tops among 150 contenders across AC Nielsen offices in India (Above)
Cash for health
At Godrej’s sprawling Vikroli office, fitness comes with a fair. Their annual award function is preceded by Godrej ke Khiladi, a month-long programme of telegames and sports. Every Friday, work stops post-lunch. Then it’s up to the staff to choose if they want to try their hand at tug of war, rock climbing, bullock cart racing or dahi handi. Brands within Godrej compete with each other, with top management taking lead.
And if that isn’t encouraging enough, there’s a weekly cash price of Rs 50,000 for the winning team, and Rs 1 lakh as grand prize which is taken by the group that emerges as winner of the year. The only catch; teams must spend the stash on celebration and involve the whole department. After the success of the Mumbai chapter, which started five years ago, game day was extended to Godrej offices in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chandigarh. This is in addition to the Stepathlon that Godrej has also signed up for.
According to Krishnan, the mass participation wellness segment is the fastest growing vertical in sports marketing globally. Pitching the idea to companies owes to the fact that Indians spend the largest part of their day at work. “India’s increasing pace of urbanisation and the fact that our lifestyles are leading to minimal movement required a solution that could be easily and widely adopted. We came up with walking,” says Krishnan.
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