CSSC gives the public sector the nudge to budge this spring

CSSC’s Active Wellbeing is back with a brand-new challenge to encourage everyone to be more active and focus on their wellbeing this May.

Kinga Derrick, Head of Operations at Defence Equipment & Support, is an Active Wellbeing Champion and will be one of thousands taking on the Nudge to Budge and participating in CSSC’s brand-new step challenge this May.

After moving into a new role within Defence Equipment & Support at the end of 2024, Kinga almost immediately found the value in physical activity, using the Active Wellbeing challenge as an icebreaker with her new team, leading not only to a warm welcome, but a tight-knit team.

“Sometimes you want to come into an office and have a bit of an icebreaker when you’re going into a meeting, and this did just that. I didn’t think it would have that effect on everyone, but the end result is I’m much closer with the 10 people who were part of my (Active Wellbeing) team and at the same time, I have people saying, ‘Well, I would like to sign up to the next Active Wellbeing event or challenge , when is that?’ I kind of became this Active Wellbeing Champion!” Kinga said.

Active Wellbeing, the UK’s largest physical activity campaign, aims to remove barriers and inspire members of the civil service and public sector to move more and be more active in a bid to improve their overall wellbeing.

Kinga enthuses over the benefits of sports and exercise and its almost universal nature, particularly in her new role;

“I always find exercise for me is the way to express myself, I used to be a very active runner. Now I’m a little bit less so, but I will still do a Parkrun and similar things, so for me, if I struggle for a topic of conversation, I will always revert to sport.

You know, even if someone talks to me about football – I don’t really know football – but I can relate to the buzz and  the energy it  gives you.”

To celebrate National Walking Month, the new Active Wellbeing challenge takes on an Around-the-UK Walking route visiting stunning coastal locations, running from 19 May to 31 May. Teams of 10 from across the Civil Service and Public Sector will compete against each other to see how far they can travel around the UK by logging daily walking activity, with a sign-up deadline of 15 May.

Aside from the benefits of integrating with a new team, Kinga has also benefited from the ‘Nudge to Budge’ as it has encouraged her to set, meet, and beat her own personal targets.

“I’m very competitive with myself and I like to set myself little targets. I used to easily hit 15 to 20 thousand steps a day and then, recently with the job changes and everything, I kind of dwindled down to less than 10,000 steps, which was my daily target. During the Active Wellbeing February challenge, I was hitting the numbers because I’ve been competing with others. So I’m on the continuous streak of beating my 10,000 steps every day.”

Kinga continued on the benefits of this;

“All 10 of us have seen the positive benefits of moving more,  ‘Well, I sleep better because I move more, and if I sleep better, I’m actually able to do a little bit more during the daytime.’. its common knowledge that  you need a month of continuous routine to build that into your daily life, and you can just carry on – and this is exactly what happened.”

In February 2025, over 17,000 people participated in the month-long campaign designed to remove everyday barriers to exercise and get everyone up, out and active. This May, CSSC hopes to encourage more public sector workers and civil servants to find new ways of getting active for their physical and mental wellbeing.

Every step taken will count towards a team total; all participants need to do is sync their smart device to record their activity or manually add it to the website throughout the challenge.

You can sign up here and create or join a team before Thursday, 15 May.