Their philosophy is ‘engage first, then make healthy’.
Stepathlon Lifestyle (SLPL) is a global wellness company, founded by Ravi Krishnan and Shane Bilsborough. SLPL creates an ecosystem that promotes corporate health, fitness and productivity by increasing daily activity, through a unique initiative called Stepathlon.
Stepathlon founded in 2012, is a race around a ‘Virtual World’. Originally aimed at corporates, their ‘Movement for Movement’ is a mass participation event for corporates and institutions which promotes behavioural change through teamwork and participation for all employees regardless of age, gender or location, designation and fitness levels.
So far Stepathlon virtual world race has had 220,000 participants in 54 countries on 5 continents.
Stepathlon is an effective solution to promote engagement and teamwork across different levels of your company. It motivates your employees towards embracing a fitter, healthier positive lifestyle in an environment that’s supportive and fun. It breaks hierarchical barriers and combats the significant effects and costs of ‘absenteeism’ and ‘presenteeism’ (where an individual is physically present but unable to give 100%), that have an increasingly negative impact on companies. More than anything the biggest plus about the Stepathlon program is that it’s simple, and accommodates time and space constraints.
Because of the impact the Stepathlon program has had, they have also been invited to create customised races for corporates including Accenture, Tata Steel and Linfox Australia and currently designing a programme for a pharmaceutical company to engage over 5000 doctors across India. To help create a fitter future generation they have partnered with Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli to create Stepathlon Kids, a movement that aims to make children and parents healthier through awareness, movement and guidance on holistic wellness.
Here are a few statistics to showcase engagement and impact of Stepathlon:
- 42% Stepathletes reported increased engagement at their workplace
- 44% Stepathletes reported greater teamwork within their company
- 47% of Stepathletes took less sick days (during the 100-day period of Stepathlon Vs the previous 100-day period)
- 54% of Stepathletes increased their frequency of exercise and
- 49% of Stepathletes lost weight (aaverage weight lost was 5.3 kilograms)
Their success comes from the fact that Stepathlon sits at the junction of mass participation, self-quantification, gamification and gratification.
How does Stepathlon work?Stepathlon is for companies of all sizes and across all industries. Companies are encouraged to enter as many teams (of 5 participants from single or multiple locations) as they choose. Each participant wears a pedometer, a step counting device.
Participants enter their total number of daily steps recorded by the pedometer, directly into the online portal or via a mobile application. Participants are encouraged to walk, run, play a sport, swim and even cycle to increase their daily step count. A participant can simply enter the distance taken while doing activities such as swimming and cycling into the course website and Stepathlon’s conversion formula does the rest.
The steps of each team are converted into kilometres and plotted on Stepathlon’s map of the “virtual world”. Teams compete both internally and against teams from other companies, in a race across more than 40 different locations on the virtual world.
Once the race ends, every Stepathlete's journey continues through the ‘Stepping Stones’ program. In the year-long program, they work with domain experts across the spectrum - from nutrition to Zumba to diagnostics, to provide a holistic wellness platform that is designed to help organisations and employees remain motivated and active.
