Back in 2004, TIME magazine ran a story on the then-emerging phenomenon of people turning to pedometers to count the steps they take every day to help them change their lifestyle habits for the better.

It wasn't long before organizations large and small began purchasing pedometers – often getting bulk discounts on them, or freebies from their medical insurance carriers – to help them implement voluntary fitness programs that focused on reaching a certain number of steps in a given time frame. 

"10,000 steps" soon emerged as the number to reach.  It was a reasonable group goal, given the easy-to-wrap-your-head-around figure itself and the fact that fairly active individuals reach it (the equivalent of 5 miles) in one day.  It was just a matter of getting employees to take time out of their day to record the extra steps that were not part of their normal routine.  When workers did this in groups, this was where team building really began to, ahem, take shape.

We wrote about this trend in 2005 when we interviewed Reed Engel, the director of wellness strategies at Mather LifeWays, a nonprofit with locations in several states whose mission is to enhance the lives of older adults.  At the time, about half of their 450 employees had just completed the organization's first formal wellness initiative, their own 10,000 Steps program spread across 8 weeks.

Yet, over the past few years that goal has gotten a lot bigger in some quarters, stepping up (no pun intended) the competition factor, as well as the bragging rights for top performers.  According to this article from the Bend, Oregon Bulletin, the area's largest employer, Cascade Healthcare Community, has an insurer that is challenging its employees to walk 1 million steps, or "about the number of strides it would take to walk the perimeter of the insurer’s service area, which stretches into Montana."

And this piece from Palm Springs, California's Desert Sun talks about another health care organization whose partnership with Shape Up The Nation, a leading provider of corporate team wellness efforts, is getting some workers to aim for 10,000 steps a day as part of a 12-week program.

So, if one of your firm's employee engagement activities is a walking program that tracks a certain number of steps in a given period, you might want to consider upping the ante (steps).  Your employees will thank you and, as the Bulletin article notes when it comes to the the resulting reduced medical costs, your bottom line will likely come out healthier as well.