Employees embrace the Scottish Journey Workplace Challenge

Sustrans Scotland has been encouraging people to travel more actively to work during March, by inviting them to join its Scottish Workplace Journey Challenge.

Workplaces from across the country are competing against each other to see who can clock up the most walking, cycling, public transport and car-sharing journeys between 1–31 March, in a bid to win more than £2,000 worth of prizes.

Funded by Transport Scotland, the free challenge is helping to inspire people to travel in ways that benefit their health, wellbeing and the environment.  

The team in Sustrans Scotland have been overwhelmed by the success so far

The concept is simple: individuals, or workplaces sign up for the challenge using the Scotland.getmeactive.org.uk website and app, which is customised for the challenge. 

Journeys can be logged on a daily basis or at any stage of the week or month. Participants can track their progress, see how many calories they’ve burned, what percentage of their weekly 150 minutes exercise they’ve achieved, and how much money they’ve saved by cycling or walking instead of driving, and how much CO2 emissions they’ve reduced. 

To add an element of competition and fun, it’s possible for workplaces to track themselves against other workplaces – or even within departments of the same company.

Half way through and more than double the impact

Our workplaces co-ordinator Jenny Muir said. “It’s been really inspiring so far. Last year was the first year of the Scottish Workplaces Journey Challenge. This year, we’ve more than doubled the number of people signed up for the challenge and have an 80% increase in the number of workplaces taking part.  Halfway through the challenge and we are already at nearly 25,000 journeys recorded. 

“There's a great element of fun in the challenge. Watching people tweet their pictures of their journey to work inspires others to give it a try. And of course there is healthy competition between different companies."

One such company is the office of the world’s largest arts festival, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe where 90% of the workforce have joined the challenge.

Sally Davidge, HR Manager for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society said: “The Scottish Workplace challenge is a great initiative to get people thinking about alternative, more active ways to travel to work. We are really enjoying the challenge and the friendly competition with other businesses across the country.”

If your company wishes to take part in future Workplace Journey Challenges, or to find out about what support we can offer to encourage and enable your staff to travel on foot or by bike more often, contact Sustrans about our workplace engagement opportunities.