Why we recorded 3.7 million steps for StepChange!

In this weeks Leading the Way blog, we review the activities that took place over debt awareness week and congratulate the winners of our internal challenge.  

Debt Awareness Week (DAW) has now come and gone for another year and Bristow & Sutor is extremely proud of the efforts that were displayed to raise awareness of this important cause.  

In total, 11 teams featuring 44 members of staff from across the Bristow & Sutor Group, including Bristow & Sutor, Credit Style and Debt Recovery Plus, took part in the Steps for StepChange challenge and competitively walked against each other for 7 days. This was tracked and recorded using the 'Pacer Pedometer & Step Tracker’ app, which included a live leader board. Many of the competitors asked for sponsorship and Bristow & Sutor promised to match the entrant fee per team to help boost the final figure raised.  

Healthy competition 

In the end, we walked a combined 3,761,488 steps and raised over £200 for StepChange. A phenomenal contribution of 615,638 steps secured victory for ‘Chafing the Dream’, a team comprising Adam Taylor (Business Development Assistant), Darren Bell (Solutions Manager – Road Traffic), Simon Freedman (Solutions Manager – Revenues) and Paul Kyte (Head of Client Development). A special congratulations is in order for Darren, who was the weeks top-stepper, reaching an incredible 184,669 steps - an average of over 26k steps per day. Gold medals are now in the post to the worthy winners. Congratulations!   

Those not taking part in the steps challenge helped to promote the campaign in other ways, including many contributions to a request for the best money-saving advice tips. Some of the helpful ideas suggested included meal preparations that create leftovers for several days, utilising the refillable options now available on various shopping items and even how to make safe but practical firelighters using old toilet roll tubes – a timely suggestion as we begin to see some BBQ weather return to UK shores!  

We also dedicated the week on social media to DAW too, ensuring all activities and updates shared online related to the campaign and that posts were designed to show followers how to show support. Useful links and direction towards helpful related advice and services were featured and daily updates were provided to employees, raising discussion points on topics such as supporting debtors, physical and mental health, financial wellbeing, mindfulness, coronavirus implications, employee assistance programmes and much more. 

A long-term impact  

Debt Awareness Week (DAW) is organised by StepChange, one of the leading debt advice charities in the UK, to bring more awareness to the issues faced by people who find themselves in problem debt. The ideas and initiatives that take place during this week are not only for 7 days but must aim to promote conversations around financial hardship at any time. This is especially true as we emerge as a nation from the coronavirus pandemic.  

Bristow & Sutor took part in this years campaign as part of our ongoing commitment to social responsibility. We always encourage debtors to speak to us or to access free impartial debt advice as soon as they identify a problem and will continue to share this message whenever possible. 

This initiative has successfully brought together members of staff from across the Bristow & Sutor Group, encouraged us to get active and inspired us to raise money and awareness for a good cause. The positive well-being implications of this includes an impact on both physical and mental health, which is more important than ever to businesses and people from all different walks of life at this moment in time.   

Bristow & Sutor remains keen to further its collaborations with the debt advice sector and will keep fostering important conversations around financial hardship. Now that DAW is over for another year, we will continue to regularly offer training sessions and presentations on our processes to debt advice providers and directly refer over-indebted people to services that may help them resolve their problems.  

Bristow & Sutor continues striving to provide the best service possible and is committed to its ethos of being Cool, Calm and Collected.