Good practice:

PwC Spring Walk challenge (International Sport Day)

On April 6 2021 PwC started a collective walk for all its employees in Poland. The aim was to walk 25k km together by the end of May. If the goal is achieved PwC would donate PLN 10,000 to the Swim for a Dream Foundation, which organizes swimming classes for children and adolescents from communities at risk of exclusion. In addition to walking and running, the challenge included roller skating, cycling and training on trainers. Everybody who joined the challenge had to use the Worksmile* application to register their activity. As a result, 200 employees got involved, who in total reached 36230 km. PwC supported SFAD Foundation with a 10 000 zł donation.

*The Worksmile application is a commercial solution, available for a fee. It is part of a wider tool: Worksmile is more than a system offering non-wage benefits for employees, it is a tool for building an engaging organizational culture based on communication and community building, health, and employee appreciation and reward. In the case of the app itself, it can be combined with sports apps to track one's sports performance. The owner of the Worksmile benefit platform is Fitqbe Sp. z o. o. from Warsaw

• Employees engagement
• IT tool to collect the individual results - e.g. Worksmile
• Money for charity donation

200 PwC employees participated in the event and tracked their activity in the Worksmile app. Everyone was able to track results in real time, add photos and posts. This allowed them to motivate each other. The most active participants cycled more than 1000 km.
After a year of remote work and social isolation, the campaign encouraged PwC employees to go outdoors. As employees gave up their cars and chose walking or cycling, they also took care of the environment (app also monitors CO2 reduction)

- encouraging employees to sign up and take part,
- promotion tools required,
- some people were worried to go out after COVID

• Social effect: the project linked the corporate efforts with the local communities (PwC and Swim for a Dream Foundation): due to the individual engagement of employees a tangible social effect was achieved (8 weekly cycles of swimming lessons for 100 children from potentially excluded families, meetings between children and athletes, children's consultations with a dietitian, swimming pool layette)
• corporate social responsibility: the initiative was a bottom-up proof of the CSR in its most valuable form
• significance of dedicated leaders: the project was an idea implemented thanks to personal engagement of dedicated sportspeople within the PwC organisations, who managed to convince both the corporate authorities and the staff to take part in it