Commonly a list of locations, departments or other groupings. This is optional, but it is highly recommended for an optimum group Leaderboard page, especially if you have a sizeable group or multiple locations/departments: 

• Provide a list as one column in an Excel sheet. This list will be loaded in as-is;  please spell-check and make sure the list is accurate in every way.

Email your group/team list to contact@healthcode.org

Involvement and support from senior leaders (CEO, Principal, Coaches, etc.) is a key success factor. Involvement ideas: 

• Have senior leaders record brief videos to encourage registration and participation 
• Have senior leaders send emails to employees encouraging registration and participation throughout the November challenge

• If you don’t already have a formal wellness team at your school/office/organization, recruit employee volunteers to join a Wellness Activation Team. This team will help you implement Turkey Trek, get people moving, and keep people excited through the event.
• Designate a main point person for communicating with the Turkey Trek team (this will often be the person who set up the team event, but if different please email that name to us).
• Designate a point person for each team. This person will be in charge of communications, translations, incentives and inner-office promotions for their teams.

1. Review the Turkey Trek marketing communication tools such as logos.

2. Review the Turkey Trek EMAIL TEMPLATES and SOCIAL MEDIA samples; customize for your group:

• • • “How to Register” email (adjust steps 3 and 4 before sending, per the below): 
    • On Step 3: Fill in your group name where it says GROUP NAME
    • On Step 4: If your company provided Turkey Trek with your groups/teams, leave as is. If you chose not to have groups/teams for your company, change this line to read “Skip the Select Your Group/Team pulldown” 

All emails: Make edits/additions as needed, such as:

• • • your group goals (mile goal as a group and number or percentage of folks participating)
    • per team goals (a great way to unite the local team in a goal)
    • per participant goals 

3. Set up registration promotions in common areas (such as break areas).

Internal company incentives are important to boost your group’s registration and participation. Examples:

• PTO or Vacation hours/days for meeting a goal
• Gift Cards and Prizes
• Recognition via newsletters, emails, etc.

• Set a registration goal: X number or X percent of participants registered by November 1.
• Set a group wide first day mile goal (November 1)
• Set a group wide mile goal for the entire month

(You will find the Email Templates HERE) 

October 15: 

Send the “HOW TO REGISTER” email to your group at least once during this period: In the email templates you will find the “HOW TO REGISTER” email. This will tell your group exactly how to register on the website for the event. Just cut, paste, customize and send (NOTE: Make sure to customize steps 3 and 4 in this email before sending).

Send the “Registration Reminder” email: 

• TIP: In these emails state the goals for your organization – specifically registration goals (number/percentage of employees your group is wanting to have registered).
• TIP: Include a video from senior leaders in these emails encouraging your group to register by X date to meet the registration goal. Another option is to have the email be sent from the senior leader to the whole group. 

 October 15, 28: 

Send email to employees saying:

• October 31st is the last day to register before the event starts (Note: team members can still register through November 30, but encouraging them to be registered before October 31 is the best plan for a solid event – people work better with deadlines).

• In these emails be sure to state any special group plans, occurring on November 1st (or 2nd or 3rd), to kickoff the Turkey Trek challenge:

1. state your first day goal
2. hold a special event (walking the first mile together as a group, kickoff ceremony led by CEO/Principal, etc.)

November:

Send an email to your team to get them excited that Turkey Trek is underway and they can include their activity as of November 1st. Reiterate your group’s first day goals and goals for the month. Provide a calendar of any events your company is putting on or sponsoring (walking groups, company bootcamps, etc.). 

• OKAY… for those days when back in school/office/etc. Remember that virtual reach out work great too — Post/Display any marketing assets starting around October 1st: Put up posters, table cards, etc. in common areas and high traffic areas (break room, dining area, elevator, meeting rooms, front desk, etc.) or send digitally if people are working from home.

• Registration Incentives: Provide an incentive to register (for example: a drawing each week starting October 15th and throughout November, from those who have registered, to win X).

• Activation Team Promotions: Have wellness activators actively engaging people in registration within common areas (lunch/break rooms, office meetings/status, Zoom calls, etc.)

This is a big motivator for individual participants and the team as a whole. Be sure to communicate and promote that each participant visits this page often to check how they and their group/team are doing. See 2b below for how to access this page.

Instructions on how to access the Leaderboard for your organization: 

• In your profile, locate the Turkey Trek logo in your Event Stats column.
• Under that logo you will see the word ORGANIZATION  with your group name in blue
• Click on the group name and it will take you to the Leaderboard page. There you can see a leaderboard of individuals from your group and the overall stats for all participants combined. 
• Click on the “View Groups” link on this page to see a leaderboard of various locations/teams.
• Click on the name of any group/team to see the individual leaderboard for that group. 

On-Demand Reports: Wellness leaders can pull an on-demand report of  participation by clicking on the “Download All From Organization” link on this page

Examples include:

• Walking Wednesdays (set a time and place for employees to meet in person or virtually each Wed morning, at lunch or after work to walk together). 
• Informal Bootcamps or Yoga classes
• Take the Stairs Days
• Encourage Walking Meetings or Virtual Meetings
• Walk in a Park Day

• We will send an email to all participants reminding them to log miles from the weekend. We see a big bump in miles being logged each Monday when we send reminders.
• We suggest that you send an email to all participants every Monday or Tuesday during November and on November 30 to remind them to log their miles (especially important for those who do not connect a Fitbit, Strava, or Map My Fitness account to their profile for automatic logging).
• Remind people coming back from vacation that they can enter all their activity data accomplished as of November 1st.

Provide incentives as you reach milestones on the way to your team goal. For example, if your goal is 10,000 miles, give away incentives as the participants reach each 1,000 mile marker. Be sure to draw the winner randomly from those who are participating. This prevents it from being about who does the most miles (which can be discouraging to folks who are new to activity) and prevents gaming the system (as there is no advantage to having more miles than others when it comes to incentives).

Be sure to take photos and videos throughout the event and share through any team social channels (internal and external). This will go a long way in helping visually connect all participants as they see others having fun and being active!

Use hashtag:#TurkeyTrek, @HealthCodeIAM

On Demand Reports: An on-demand report is available on the Company Leaderboard page for your event, by clicking the “Download All from Organization” link. This report will show you first name, last name, office location or group, and logged miles for each person (it will not show any contact or personal information – see below for Detailed Reports)

Suggested Stats to Share with employees and senior leaders:

• Company stats (miles, calories, minutes):  These can be found on the Company Leaderboard page or calculated using the detailed reports. 
• Per group/team stats (miles, calories, minutes): Found on the group leaderboard page for each group. Click into the Company Leaderboard page, click View Groups link and click on any office name (or calculate using the detailed report)
• Projected Health Care Cost Savings: Divide the total calories burned by 3500. Then multiply that number by 9. The resulting number is your projected health care cost savings.*

*This formula is based on 2009 Mayo Clinic research and is endorsed by United Healthcare and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. Explanation: Body fat reduction through the use of caloric expenditure occurs at the known rate of 1 lb body fat per 3500 calories burned/used. Healthcare costs due to weight gain have been calculated at $28 per pound over a three year period, or approximately $9 per pound annually.” So, to get the Projected/Estimated Healthcare Savings we take the total calories burned and divide by 3500 (caloric expenditure to burn 1lb of body fat), and then multiply by $9 (the savings per year per 1lb).This figure is directional and meant to provide an additional guide for how an organization is benefiting from participation, outside of the miles, calories and minute metrics.