EXCLUSIVE: Informa has held a fitness challenge for its 8,000 employees globally to encourage staff health and wellbeing.
February Fitness saw 100 teams from Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, the UK and the US cycle, swim, run or walk to support their favourite charity.
Employees covered 50,000 miles, with three winning teams each receiving £1,000 to donate to a charity of their choice.
The teams, which comprised up to six people, logged their scores on a league table, which was available via the publisher’s intranet site, Indigo. The site also included a photo gallery and the FebFit Fun Awards, which recognised the best team name and best team photo.
The winning teams were: Team Pie from Informa House in London for cycling, Dunkin Donut Fitness Freaks from ESI International in Chicago for running/walking, and Polar Bears from Ovum/Taylor and Francis USA for swimming.
Emma Blaney, group HR director at Informa, said: “What started as an idea to increase fitness, turned out to be a hugely successful event.
“We were simply astonished by the number of teams taking part and we hear the charity element encouraged people enormously. We’ve had employees asking for it to happen more than once a year, telling us that it’s changed their fitness habits for the better and that they hugely enjoyed the camaraderie and competitiveness that built up over the month.
“For a company like Informa, which is spread far and wide geographically, with some people working remotely, February Fitness gave people the opportunity to connect to current and new employees, create targets, plan and get motivated together.
“They had another reason to talk to each other, to get enthusiastic, to plot, plan, laugh, and keep fit.
“Many of our divisions are specialist brands in their own right, so it helped them feel much more a part of Informa. People loved understanding how close they were to winning and how many extra miles they had to put in to win.”