Stepping Up For Kids

Social responsibility and giving back to the communities where we live and work are core values at WEX. As a company with offices in 11 countries, we’re very excited to announce the completion of our first global philanthropy challenge, Stepping Up for Kids. Participating WEXers walked more than 68,720 miles in five months to raise $20,000 to benefit UNICEF, a world leader in providing humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers.

Philanthropy + Fitness

The platform for developing the fundraiser was Sonic Boom – our wellness portal that launched globally this January. The portal allows WEXers to participate in well-being programs, track activities, and get rewarded with positive incentives including monetary rewards to spend on step trackers or sneakers and additional personal time off. The use of step trackers by many Sonic Boom participants provided the impetus for creating a program that was about more than just fitness.

“We think of wellness holistically – it’s about everything that impacts a person, including financial health, career, community and physical health,” says Katie Ewen, our global benefits analyst and wellness coordinator who spearheaded Stepping Up for Kids. “We wanted to create an event that tackled more than one aspect of an employee’s overall well-being, so we partnered with our corporate philanthropy team to create a step-based challenge where the reward would be a charitable donation.”

Our corporate philanthropy team went to work to identify a global organization to benefit from our challenge, and choose UNICEF. They also worked with Ewen to define the basis for the fundraising: for every 100 steps taken, WEX would donate 1¢ up to $20,000. At the end of the challenge, WEXers walked a total of 171,779,196 steps – that’s 35 million steps a month. The final dollar tally for those steps came to just under $18,000 – and in recognition of the awesome effort shown, corporate leadership made whole the entire $20,000 donation to UNICEF.

“Honestly, I’m a pretty active guy, so to take that activity and do something good with it was a no-brainer,” said Eric Heyen, a technical project manager at our WEX Health Omaha office and one of the challenge’s top steppers. He notes that his activity level increased significantly two years ago when he helped start a basketball program for high school and college aged young men. Our WEX Health Fargo office placed third in total funds raised by its team, while our South Portland corporate and IT offices placed first and second respectively.

Inside Sonic Boom

WEXers were able to easily join the Stepping Up for Kids challenge – all they needed was a step device registered through Sonic Boom that automatically tracks steps taken via Bluetooth. Close to 18% of WEXers with step devices registered with Sonic Boom signed up for the UNICEF fundraiser. Ewen notes that the ability to automatically track steps through Sonic Boom made it easier to people to participate in the challenge, and helps them accurately track rewards points.

“Since we launched Sonic Boom in January, there’s been amazing utilization of the platform and great feedback from employees,” says Ewen. “The health and well-being of our employees is critical to our success, and we were thrilled to combine the health benefits of WEXers’ Sonic Striding efforts with a reward that speaks to their passion for the helping their communities.” Watch the video below to hear more about this initiative.