The Best Employee Wellness Challenge Ideas: 100+ Challenges Ready to Launch in One Click

Coming up with a great challenge idea every month is harder than it sounds. What mode should you run? What's the right goal for this time of year? Is this the third leaderboard in a row? (It is. Your people are tired of leaderboards.)

Most Stridekick challenge admins are managers, office coordinators, or benefits leads doing this on top of everything else, without a dedicated team or a playbook. And yet the pressure to keep a program engaging, varied, and consistent never goes away.

We built Challenge Templates to solve exactly that. But before we get into what they are, let's talk about what is key to making a successful challenge. Because that's what we baked into every single template.

What makes a successful fitness challenge

Stridekick has over a decade of experience running challenges with groups of every shape and size. Here’s what we know works:

1. Vary the mode. Not everyone is motivated by leaderboards. In fact, only rewarding the people on top discourages the people who need a wellness program most. Mixing in modes like Streak, Stick To It, and Group Target activates different motivation styles such as habit builders and team players. Rotate the mode often and your whole group will be motivated to show up.
2. Go beyond steps. Steps are a great starting point, but not everyone is a walker. Distance, active minutes, and custom activities like meditation, hydration, or strength training bring in participants who prefer to practice wellness in other ways.
3. Keep it short. Challenges under 30 days consistently outperform longer ones in engagement and completion. A focused 7-day sprint can do more for your program than a 60-day challenge that most people forget about by week four.
4. Lean into the moment. Challenges tied to a holiday, an awareness month, or a new season get more buy-in because participants already have a reason to care and celebrate. These moments are already motivating enough, you just have to channel it.

Prizes: the most overlooked detail in your challenge program

Here's something we also see constantly: admins put real thought into their challenge design and then default to "most steps wins." Simple, easy, understandable. But it results in a majority of the group to check out and where a lot of wellness programs quietly lose their momentum.

A great prize strategy doesn't just reward the winner. It keeps everyone else moving.

The key is spreading recognition across more finish lines. Raffle entries for daily syncing. Shoutouts for the most improved. Category prizes for weekend warriors or streak builders. When more people feel like they have a real shot at being recognized, people at every fitness level stay engaged until the end.

The mode you choose will shape the right prize structure. Match your recognition to how your challenge actually works, and you'll see it in your participation numbers. 

Here's our full guide to prize strategy by mode →

Every template in our library is built around these principles. A decade of best practices, distilled into ready-to-go challenges that are already optimized for the mode, the moment, and the prize strategy. You don’t have to start from scratch. You can start from tried and tested challenges that are proven to work.

Zero setup. Seriously.

Every template comes pre-loaded with a name, description, cover image, challenge mode, goal, optional prize strategy, and suggested duration. The only thing you fill in is your start date. If it looks good, hit Create challenge and you're done. If you want to tweak something, use it as a jumping-off point. Hit Edit details and make it your own. Either way, the most time consuming part is already taken care of.

Timely, seasonal suggestions.

Every month, a fresh row of trending templates surfaces at the top of the library — timed to what's actually happening in the world. Mental Health Awareness Month. March Madness. The holidays. The moments your group is already talking about are pre-built into a challenge, ready to go. Just pick it.

Find the right challenge in seconds.

Not sure what you're looking for? Filter by duration, mode, month or metric to surface relevant suggestions. Know exactly what you want? Search by theme, holiday, season, or activity type. Either way, Stridekick makes it easy to find and set up the right challenge quickly.

Plan your whole year in one sitting.

Browse the full library, stack a few challenges back-to-back, and you've got a challenge program  that runs itself. No more scrambling for ideas before the month starts. No more starting from scratch every time. Set it and forget it — your group stays moving, month after month, without the monthly lift.

Because the best challenge is the one that actually gets created. 💪

Learn more about Challenge Templates in SuperDash →

Watch how to use the feature