We are excited to announce two new challenge modes in Pacer for Teams, which will allow you to build a more robust, holistic wellness platform for yourself, your teams, and your organization.
Healthy Habit: Participants check in by marking the daily completion of a specific healthy habit.
Total Tally: Admins establish a timeframe and enforce a daily limit for a specific wellness activity, tracking participants' cumulative efforts. The system provides default measure units and daily limits but is changeable. For example, the default unit for Daily Reading is minutes, with a default daily limit of 180 minutes. However, you can change the unit to hours or pages and adjust the daily limit.
Pre-Set Healthy Habit Challenges
- Drink 8 Glasses of Water
- Daily Meditation
- Complete a Workout
- Take the Stairs Instead of the Elevator
- Gratitude Journal
- Mindful Breathing
- Eat 5 Servings of Fruits and Vegetables
- Limit Sugar/Soda Intake
- Limit/Reduce Caffeine Intake
- Daily Stretch
- Read for 15 Minutes
- Sleep at Least 7 Hours
Pre-Set Total Tally Challenges
Total Tally challenges default to the following metrics but can be customized.
- Daily Meditation: in minutes (daily limit: 120 minutes)
- Daily Workout: in minutes (daily limit: 120 minutes)
- Daily Reading: in minutes (daily limit: 180 minutes)
- Sleeping: in hours (daily limit: 10 hours, decimals allowed ex 7.5 hours)
Custom Wellness Challenges
Admins can also create unique Healthy Habit or Total Tally challenges, such as yoga. Name the challenge, add the healthy habit, set the rules and goals, and publish.
Leaderboard
Healthy Habit
- Individuals will be ranked by the total number of check-ins.
- Teams will be ranked by the total number of check-ins of all team members or by average check-ins per team member. The two choices are selected based on whether you have the same or similar number of members in each team.
- Tiebreaker: Except for check-ins, there won’t be any other tiebreakers as this is not a challenge as competitive as a step/distance challenge.
Total Tally
- Individuals will be ranked by the total effort they spend on the activity.
- Teams will be ranked by either total or average efforts per team member. The two choices are selected based on whether you have the same or similar number of members in each team.
- Tiebreaker: Except for total efforts, there won’t be any other tiebreakers as this is not a challenge as competitive as a step/distance challenge.
Challenge Goal Settings
For Healthy Habit and Total Tally challenges, admins can set up challenge goals for individual participants, teams, and the entire organization.
Healthy Habit
Let’s say you want to create a Drink 8 Glasses of Water challenge for 30 days.
- Individual Goal: If you set the individual goal to 20, participants must check in at least 20 days during the challenge to complete it. They can exceed 20 check-ins, but anyone who checks in less than 20 times does not meet the individual goal.
- Team Goal: If you set a team goal of 90 total check-ins, you expect a team of at least three people to check in 30 times each during the challenge. This requires some math, but you got it! Pay extra attention to the challenge duration and team size so your participants can realize the team goal. If your team sizes vary significantly, you can choose the average number of check-ins per team.
- Organizational Goal: When setting a goal for your organization, ensure all participants check in so that the collective count reaches the target. Consider the challenge's duration and your organization's size to ensure the goal is achievable.
For participants, individual goals are visible on the Pacer home screen under Pinned Challenges and the challenge leaderboard. Organizational and team goals are visible on the challenge leaderboard. Admins can manage and track all goals in the admin platform.
Total Tally
Suppose you want to create a Daily Reading challenge. By default, the challenge is measured in minutes, with a limit of 180 minutes per day. Your challenge is seven days long.
- Individual Goal: If you set an individual goal of 350 minutes, participants must check in an average of at least 50 minutes per day. Pay attention to the duration of your challenge and the daily limit so that individuals can accomplish the goal.
- Team Goal: If you create a team goal, pay attention to the challenge duration and team size so your participants can finish the team goal. You can choose the average value per team if your team sizes vary significantly.
- Organizational Goal: If you set up an organizational goal, consider both the duration of the challenge and the size of your organization to ensure the goal is achievable.
Individual goals are visible for participants on the Pacer home screen under Pinned Challenges and the challenge leaderboard. Organizational and team goals are visible on the challenge leaderboard. Admins can manage and track all goals on the admin platform in the Data Center.
Wellness Education Tools
Need help promoting wellness during the challenge? Pacer provides actionable and informative tips on the challenge leaderboards to assist participants in achieving their new healthy habit goals. Concepts like Gratitude Journal and Mindful Breathing might be new for some participants, so we’ll introduce them and provide them with easy-to-follow practice guides.
Tip of the Day
A green window on the leaderboard provides simple and effective facts and suggestions.
Note: The tip of the day is not available for the Custom Wellness Challenges at this moment.
Pacer Blog Articles
In addition to the Tip of the Day, participants will find a link to a comprehensive blog article dedicated to each of the 12 healthy habits. These resources are designed to deepen participants' understanding and effectively support their adoption of these practices.
All of the wellness blog articles are accessible on our P4T support page.
Announcements and Challenge Feed
Remember that all P4T challenge leaderboards can include a participant social feed if enabled. Admins can send announcements with content and URLs, including images. Participants can like, comment on, and add their posts with content and images.
FAQ
Q: How do we access the new P4T wellness challenges?
A: Healthy Habits and Total Tally have been added to the Admin platform’s Manage Challenges menu > Create a New Challenge. Admins will not need to update anything in the admin web platform. However, all users/participants must update the latest Pacer version in the Apple and Google app stores.
Q: How many healthy habits or total tally types can I add to one P4T challenge?
A: Each healthy habit or total tally challenge has a unique leaderboard and cannot be combined with another P4T challenge. Your P4T subscription allows you to create as many challenges as possible during your P4T subscription period. However, we recommend focusing on 1 or 2 different wellness challenges at a time during your challenge period to avoid too many leaderboards and confusion, especially if you also have step, distance, or adventure challenges going. Other organizations will do a different challenge type for a week or two during their P4T subscription. The sky is the limit if your P4T subscription lasts longer than a month or two.
Q: What’s a reasonable amount of time for challenge goals?
A: The time is entirely up to you! Studies say a new habit takes 21 days to form, so you should factor that in when setting up your challenge. Remember that people are less likely to achieve goals on the weekend, so allowing 1-2 days rest/off days during a challenge period per week is a good idea.
Q: How exactly is the participant data in the wellness challenges verified?
A: Wellness challenges are self-reported, so there is no way to track the activities using a smart device. These challenge types are based on trust, and we hope participants will put their best foot forward in creating new habits.
Q: What should participants do if they forget to check in?
A: No worries, participants can make up for the missing check-ins or inputs for the previous 7 days on the Pacer App. Here’s how: Enter the challenge on the Pacer App -> Tap "Total Stats" -> View all check-in history -> Tap the button to check-in. This method is also applicable to the total tally challenge.
Q: I don’t see a particular wellness activity we want to do. Can you add it?
A: As mentioned above, you can create custom Healthy Habit and Total Tally challenges. Create the activity type, upload artwork and icons as you want, and off you go. Here are some other wellness ideas: Cooking, Declutter Your Office/Home, Planking, Goal-Sharing, Go Outside, Problem-Solving/Puzzles
Q: I made a mistake when I calculated our wellness challenge goals. Can I correct or update the goals while the challenge is underway?
A: No problem. You can update them immediately on the Admin platform. Just choose the challenge, update, and save. The changes are immediately in effect. Be sure to let your participants know of the change.
Q: Is there an extra subscription cost to run these new challenges?
A: No! The new P4T wellness challenges are included in any P4T subscription without any extra fees.
For more information or product feedback, please contact your Pacer representative or email us at teams@mypacer.com.