How many steps a day should employee well-being program leaders recommend?

10,000? Fewer? More?

HES — the leader in immersive workplace wellness challenges that inspire action in a broad range of health behaviors — offers this White Paper to:

• Recap the most current and important research, clarifying the all-important distinction between minimal and optimal steps/day needed to support well-being
• Present insight on how many steps employees feel they need
• Describe tried and true programs that inspire participants to strive for the most beneficial, science-based amount of steps.

It seems obvious today that regular physical activity is good for health, especially heart health. Yet this connection was more of a hunch than scientific fact until the mid-1950s, when Jeremy Morris compared the health of London’s double-decker bus drivers to the conductors who collected passenger fares. The more physically active conductors, climbing up and down the stairs throughout every working day, were half as likely to have heart attacks or fatal heart disease compared to the sedentary drivers.

Since then, the connection between physical activity and numerous aspects of physical as well as mental well-being has been thoroughly documented. Questions remain, however, about how much activity people need.

Steps/day is a metric of growing importance to the public, wellness leaders, and researchers — it offers the prospect of a simple, memorable recommendation. And, as smartphones and wearable trackers have become commonplace, people can more easily than ever monitor their steps across the day and during dedicated activities like walks, hikes, or runs.

For these reasons, walking programs — like HES’s Walktober™ and 10K-A-Day™ challenges — have proliferated in lockstep with employee wellness strategies. But guidelines for the optimal number of steps/day have swung back and forth.