Remote and hybrid teams: walking as the low-effort culture win
Building culture on a distributed team is genuinely hard. The activities that used to do the work, the offsite, the after-work drinks, the birthday cake in the kitchen, either cost a fortune or quietly exclude the people who are not in the room. A company-wide walking challenge is the rare team-building activity that actually fits how remote and hybrid teams work, because nobody has to be in the same place, or even online at the same time, to take part.
Why remote culture is hard to build on purpose
When everyone shared a building, culture happened by accident. Now a People team has to build it deliberately, and most of the usual tools do not travel well.
- Offsites are expensive and rare. Flying a distributed team to one city is a real budget line, so it happens once or twice a year at most. Culture cannot live on two events a year.
- Virtual socials get old fast. The trivia night and the Slack game are fun for a week, then attendance drifts. They also lean on the same extroverted handful of people while everyone else lurks.
- Time zones break anything live. A team spread across the country, or across the Atlantic, cannot all show up to the same call at a reasonable hour. Anything that requires everyone online at once quietly excludes somebody.
- Hybrid splits the room. When some people are in the office and some are at home, in-person perks widen the gap instead of closing it. Whatever you run has to feel the same from a kitchen table as it does from a desk downtown.
The thing you actually want is a shared experience that has no wrong location, no required time, and no barrier to entry. That is a short list of activities. Walking is on it.
Why a walking challenge fits distributed work
A step challenge is asynchronous by nature, which is exactly the property remote work needs. Nobody schedules a walk. There is no meeting, no video call, no event you have to be available for.
Everyone participates on their own schedule
Someone walks the dog at 6am before anyone else is awake. Someone else takes a call while pacing the block at lunch. Someone gets their steps in after the kids are down at 9pm. All of it counts, and none of it needs to be coordinated with anyone. For a team scattered across time zones, that is the whole game: a common activity that never asks two people to be available at the same moment.
No commute means the walk has to be intentional, and that is the win
One quiet cost of remote work is that the built-in movement of an office day, the walk to transit, the trip to a meeting room, the coffee run, just disappears. A gentle, shared reason to step away from the desk is genuinely good for a home-office workforce, and it doubles as the culture moment. The wellbeing benefit and the team-building benefit are the same activity.
The model that makes it fair: everyone can win
Here is where most step challenges get distributed teams wrong. If the person with the most steps wins, one very fit teammate in one city takes the prize every time, and everyone else stops trying by week two. On a distributed team that is even worse, because the winner is often a stranger the rest of the group has never met in person.
Movemint is built around a different model. You set one shared company goal, and everyone who reaches it goes into a random draw for the reward. It is not the fittest person who wins. The 6am dog-walker who just clears the line has exactly the same odds as the marathoner. That single design choice is what keeps a spread-out, mixed-ability team engaged: the goal is achievable for a normal person, and hitting it is what matters, not out-walking a colleague three time zones away.
Give the team one shared journey to walk together
The fun hook that ties a distributed group together is a collective distance goal: instead of everyone competing, everyone's steps add up toward one shared destination. Picture a summer challenge where the whole company is walking from Paris to Barcelona together, and the map fills in a little more every day as steps come in from a home office in Calgary, a cafe table in Montreal, and a spare room in Toronto. Nobody had to travel and nobody had to coordinate, but the team crossed a continent as one group. It is the closest thing to a shared adventure a remote team can have without a plane ticket, and it gives people who never sit in the same room something concrete they built together.
These are capability-and-fact statements, not customer claims. Movemint is a new product, so we do not show customer logos or testimonials we have not earned.
The practicalities for a remote workforce
A distributed team raises a few fair questions before you roll anything out. The short version: it is built for exactly this.
- Phone-based tracking. Employees track steps from the native iOS and Android apps on the phone they already carry. No company hardware to ship to home addresses, and no wearable to buy.
- Bilingual by default. The app, the notifications, and the site are all available in English and French, so a pan-Canadian team competes in their own language rather than half of it being a second-class experience.
- Data stored in Canada. The production database and its backups run in Amazon Web Services' Canadian region (ca-central-1, in Montreal), and the app collects step count, distance, and calories only. No heart rate, sleep, GPS or location, weight, or medical data. Company admins see aggregate engagement, not a per-employee daily-step report.
- Rewards reach winners anywhere. You set the prizes once and built-in gift-card fulfillment delivers them digitally, so a winner in a home office in another city gets theirs the same way as anyone else. You never buy or mail a gift card.
What it costs, and how to try it
Movemint is priced at a flat $1.50 USD per employee per month, with the CAD equivalent shown for Canadian companies. Billing is monthly, so there is no annual contract to sign before you know whether your team takes to it. We help you set your first challenge up, and you watch real participation from your own workforce as it comes in. For a distributed team, that participation curve is the honest signal of whether a culture activity is landing.
Run your first company-wide challenge
Give your remote or hybrid team one shared goal to walk toward, on their own schedule, from wherever they are. Bilingual, phone-based with no wearable required, everyone who hits the goal can win, $1.50 USD/employee/month with a CAD equivalent shown, billed monthly with no annual contract, and employee data stored in Canada.
Get StartedFrequently asked questions
Does a walking challenge work across time zones?
Yes. There is nothing to schedule and no live event to attend. Everyone walks on their own clock and their steps count whenever they log them, so a team spread from Vancouver to Halifax to London all contributes to the same company goal without ever needing to be online at the same moment.
Do remote employees need a wearable to take part?
No. Employees track steps from the native iOS and Android apps on the phone they already carry. Participation is not gated on owning a Fitbit, Apple Watch, or any particular device, which matters when your team buys their own equipment at home.
How do remote employees get their prizes?
You set the prizes once and built-in gift-card fulfillment handles distribution digitally. Because rewards are delivered as gift cards rather than physical items, a winner in a home office in another city gets theirs the same way as anyone else. You never buy or mail anything yourself.
Where is our employees' data stored?
In Canada. Our production database and its backups run in Amazon Web Services' Canadian region (ca-central-1, in Montreal), so your employees' step data does not leave the country to be stored, wherever the employee happens to be walking.
Is it fair when some employees are much fitter than others?
That is the point of the model. It is not the fittest person who wins. Everyone who reaches the shared company goal goes into a random draw for the prize, so the 6am dog-walker has the same odds as the marathoner, and a distributed team is never dominated by one very fit person in one city.
Before you talk to anyone
We would rather you work out whether a step challenge fits your workforce than sit through a pitch. These three pages do that job, and none of them need a sales call.
- Is Movemint right for you? The honest buyer's guide, including who Movemint is not for.
- Check if Movemint fits your team. Three questions about your workforce, then a straight answer.
- Step challenge cost and ROI calculator. What a challenge actually costs at your headcount.