Growing An Employee Movement & Engagement Platform – with John Barron – Co-Founder & CEO of GoChallenge

In this episode of the HR business marketing podcast, A Better HR Business, Ben and his guest, John Barron, Co-Founder & CEO of GoChallenge, explore how a gamified movement platform is helping teams boost wellbeing, deepen engagement, and build stronger company cultures.

GoChallenge is a science-backed HR tech platform that uses team-based movement challenges to improve employee wellbeing, prevent burnout, and strengthen workplace culture. It helps HR and People & Culture leaders increase engagement and build more connected hybrid teams through simple daily physical activity that fits into the workday. Unlike traditional fitness apps, GoChallenge is designed specifically for organisations—requiring no gym, equipment, or extra time outside work routines.

Trusted by organisations such as DocuSign, Gartner, Red Hat, and Three Ireland, GoChallenge delivers measurable impact across wellbeing, performance, and retention. Users report reduced stress and improved productivity, while companies see stronger cross-team connections and alignment with ESG and CSR goals. The platform is easy to deploy at scale and is built on behavioural science to make workplace wellbeing both effective and engaging.

You’ll hear practical strategies for how to attract HR consulting clients, running a workplace consulting business, and business growth strategies for consultants. Whether you identify as HR, workplace, L&D, OD, recruitment, or people & culture, you’ll discover real stories and actionable advice to attract clients, win contracts, and grow sustainably.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Insights on the power of movement-based challenges to build workplace connection and engagement
• How to use inclusive wellbeing programs to appeal to HR and people & culture leaders
• Lessons from GoChallenge’s growth—scaling through values-led marketing, partnerships, and proven client results

Interview – Growing An Employee Movement & Engagement Platform – with John Barron – Co-Founder & CEO of GoChallenge

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About The ‘A Better HR Business’ Podcast

In my HR marketing podcast, I talk with different HR consultants and HR tech companies from around the world to learn about what they do and how they keep their businesses healthy and moving in the right direction.

If you have questions you want to ask me about growing an HR consultancy or marketing for HR tech companies, just let me know or visit the HR marketing services page.

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Enjoy the show!

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Episode Transcript

Episode 313: Growing An Employee Movement & Engagement Platform – with John Barron – Co-Founder & CEO of GoChallenge

Ben [00:00:00]:
Hi there. Thanks for joining me again on the show. Great to have you along, and I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation with John Barron. John’s a fascinating guy. He is the CEO and co-founder of a very cool company called GoChallenge, and they’re at GoChallenge.com.

GoChallenge is a performance-focused employee engagement platform that helps organizations build connection, improve wellbeing, and drive better performance across their teams. They do this through simple, fun, gamified movement challenges that bring employees together, whether they’re in the office or working remotely, and so on. It’s a fascinating area and such a hugely important thing. But before we get into it, John, thanks very much for joining me today.

John Barron [00:00:37]:
My pleasure, Ben. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Ben [00:00:40]:
On the show we have people all over the world, but we are in the same country, so that’s fabulous. Whereabouts are you based?

John Barron [00:00:45]:
We’re based in the southeast of Ireland, or as we like to refer to it, the Riviera of Ireland. Ben, we were getting sunshine this week in Ireland, so I think this week is going to be our summer. We’re making the most of it.

Ben [00:00:57]:
For a few years in a row, my family used to meet a bunch of other families in Cork. If listeners know anything about Cork, it’s not necessarily the sunniest of places, but we met there every June Bank Holiday or public holiday. It just happened to be sunny three years in a row. So when we said to our kids, “Where should we go on holidays this year? Spain, Portugal?” they said, “No, let’s go to Cork. It’s always sunny in Cork.”

Firstly, I guess I really want to know: tell us about GoChallenge, and also the background to you co-founding it. I’d love to know what drove it.

John Barron [00:01:27]:
A lot of good ideas in my life came from my wife, Ben. My wife is a doctor, a GP, and post-COVID she saw an explosion in people coming into her practice who were burnt out, tired, and lethargic, and they were looking for medication to address it. Caitríona would be a huge proponent of the benefits of exercise and movement. So she’d write on a prescription pad: “Go for a 30-minute walk every day for the next month, and come back and see me and let’s see how you feel then.” What shocked her was the amount of people who said, “I don’t have time. I don’t have time. I can’t fit in a walk during the day.”

John Barron [00:02:00]:
So Caitríona said to me — this is my second startup, GoChallenge — she said: “Is there some way we could come up with some type of app or service that would encourage people to incorporate movement into their busy day?” And not only that, she looked into why people struggle to exercise, Ben. There was some research done at the University of Melbourne, and she reached out to the professor there.

She explained that the vast majority of people struggle to exercise. When you ask them why they struggle, “time” is the thing they say. But when the researcher in Melbourne looked into it, it wasn’t time. What it was, was three factors: a lack of motivation, a lack of support, and a lack of external accountability. So what we’ve done is we’ve factored all those three things into our app.

John Barron [00:02:44]:
The best example I can give of that, Ben, is that on a Tuesday night here in Ireland, I might like to go for a jog. I come home from work and I’m tired and I think, “Ah, I might give it a miss.” However, I often go running with my brother Brian, and you can set your clock by Brian. If it’s raining or dark outside, he’s going to be there. So Brian gives me that accountability. I’m going to show up and I’m going to go for a run. And that’s what we’ve incorporated into GoChallenge. It’s very much a team-focused challenge that we do with companies, and I think it’s just resonating at the moment. I think the timing is right for us.

We see it in the zeitgeist. There’s an appetite for healthy social experiences, and that’s essentially what we’re bringing to the workplace.

Ben [00:03:23]:
That’s interesting. So your wife, Caitríona, was describing some of the negative things that she was seeing as a GP — people coming in with issues and so on. But I noticed you guys have a white paper called Winning at Workplace Wellbeing and Productivity, and there was an interesting line in there. It said: “There’s a huge change taking place in the workplace. For the first time ever, people are putting their physical and mental wellbeing above all else.” Which is taking the more positive approach, isn’t it? We’ve had the negative side of a GP environment, where things need to be cured or healed or whatever. Whereas this is people trying to take control of their lives and their wellbeing. So can you tell us a bit more about that side?

John Barron [00:03:58]:
Yeah, we’ve seen that, especially with the businesses that we’re working with. They’re smart; they can see that there’s this very simple equation: if your staff are healthy and connected with their colleagues, they perform better. It’s as simple as that. That’s what we’re trying to deliver to various workplaces. Obviously, there are other factors, but what we see is that connection plays a huge role.

Very simply, what we say is: we help people move more, connect more, and as a result of that, they feel and perform better. What we’ve seen since we launched is that this connection piece is very important. There’s some research done by Gallup that says if you’ve got a good friend at work, you’re seven times more engaged with your job. I think the world we’re living in now, as we all know, we’re digitally more connected than ever before. But unfortunately, on a human level, we’ve never been more disconnected. We’re seeing that when we go into companies. So what we’re trying to do through movement is facilitate more connection.

It’s funny, we just went for lunch. We’re working in the office today, so we went for a walk to a local café. There’s a company here in Waterford doing a GoChallenge at the moment, and we saw about 20 of their guys out for a walk at lunchtime, enjoying the fine weather. And that’s what we’re trying to bring — just that level of healthy connection in the workplace.

Ben [00:05:11]:
Yeah, I know the Gallup Q12 that you’re mentioning, and having the best friend at work and all that sort of thing. But equally, having a group of 20 people walking through, having the craic, as they say, is engaging. And just from an HR perspective, it’s always great to have the marketing person speaking to sales, or the HR person speaking to the finance team, or whatever, as they’re just walking along the riverside.

John Barron [00:05:32]:
And I have a lovely story about that, if you don’t mind me sharing it. We worked with this company that has offices in Dublin and Scandinavia. The marketing director told me this story.

Their IT director is based in Oslo, and they were often at loggerheads.

The marketing director was saying:
“I’d want a promotion for Christmas, and I’d approach the guy, maybe in late November — you know, the IT guy. And he’d say, ‘I’ll have it for you in six months’ time because we have a roadmap.’”

And the marketing guy would say:
“No, I need it in two weeks’ time.”

So he said, “We were always at loggerheads.”

Then, as luck would have it, they were put on the same team for the GoChallenge.

He said the first night of the challenge, the guy in Oslo took a picture of himself, his daughter, and his dog out for a walk and posted it into the team group. We call our teams after animals, so I think they were on the Sharks team or something. He posted: “Go Sharks.”

The next night, the guy in Dublin said:
“I went out for a walk with my two daughters and our dog.” They were out near Dun Laoghaire.

They said, “Look, step in here for a picture,” and he posted up: “Go Sharks.”

They had a call on the Friday, and he said he went on the call thinking, “Oh, this guy, you know…”

The call started, and the guy said to him:
“I didn’t realise you had children.”

The guy in Dublin said:
“Yeah, I have two daughters.”

And he said:
“I didn’t realise you had a daughter.”

He goes:
“Yeah, I have a daughter and two sons.”

And he said:
“They were too lazy — they wouldn’t come out with us.”

Then they started talking, and he said:
“John, it was amazing. It just turned from this kind of two-dimensional guy that I’d see on a Zoom call every week to a three-dimensional person who’s got family stuff going on.”

He said it completely changed the dynamic of their relationship. So it’s very rewarding. We have loads of stories like that. So yeah — powerful stuff in a very simple way.

Ben [00:07:05]:
How does it work for an employer? Let’s say an employer is listening to this and thinks, “Yeah, this sounds interesting.” How does it work for them?

John Barron [00:07:10]:
We have an annual plan. We now know the cadence of the challenges. We do one challenge per quarter, and what we do at the end of it is that if an employee completes all challenges, they get some reward.

One company we’re working with at the moment gives an extra day’s annual leave. Another company actually gives a financial bonus — they pay €250 for each challenge that you complete.

So at the end of the year, you can pick up a cheque for €1,000, which is great.
But normally what we do is we start with one challenge, and we normally propose a challenge called Leave No One Behind. It’s very simple. What we do — and I think we do well, Ben — is we run the challenge from start to finish. That includes onboarding, running the challenge, and supporting people throughout. We have a success coach called Gary Robinson who runs the challenge. We post videos, encourage people to get moving, run a photo competition, have some small prizes during the challenge, and then we finish it. We normally have a medal ceremony and prizes for things like the Hot Stepper MVP, the winning team, and other categories.

So normally what we say to HR people is: just do one challenge with us and see how it goes. And after that, what we usually find is: “That went well. We’d like to do that again.”

What we’ve learned, Ben, is that our challenges are designed to be inclusive. When we launched, we’d arrive at a company and say, “Okay, everyone has to walk 300 miles.” Now what we do is we allow people to set their own distance. We ask them, though, to challenge themselves to do in excess of 5,000 steps a day. Anything below that is medically classed as sedentary and is unhealthy. So we encourage people to push themselves beyond 5,000 steps a day.

Most people do achieve that. Then the nice thing is you’re put into a team, and everyone on the team has to complete their challenge for the team to win. But again, in terms of the inclusive nature of it, only you, the user, know what you selected. The rest of the team can only see how you’re progressing. There’s a kind of progress bar for your challenge. So you could have Tom, who’s doing a couch-to-5K, or Mary, who’s running a marathon, but everyone is on an equal footing.

And I have to say, that’s really helped in terms of our sales, but also in terms of participation rates and engagement in the challenges.

Ben [00:09:16]:
I like that because in other environments where you have clear winners or people out in front — whether that’s employee engagement, employee feedback, kudos, things like that — everyone else can sometimes just stop and give up because they know it’s only going to go to those people. Whereas if it’s a level playing field, there’s far more engagement. And in terms of geography longer term, I guess you’ve focused on Ireland for now?

John Barron [00:09:39]:
Yeah, we’ve done challenges now from New York to Shanghai, which has been great. What’s happened is we’ve had companies reach out to us — companies we weren’t aware of — that have seen some of our stuff on LinkedIn. Gartner is an example of that. Gartner approached us, and they did a challenge across all their European offices. The whole idea was to get their people moving more and more connected — not only with their colleagues, but also with Gartner’s culture.

And I think that’s something we do quite well. What we try to do, Ben, in the challenges is live companies’ values through our challenges.

John Barron [00:10:23]:
For instance, we’re doing a challenge at the moment with Three, the mobile phone company, and “Be One Team” is one of their values. So we’re doing it across the whole island of Ireland. Whether it’s their retail teams, their customer care team down in Limerick, or head office, everyone’s involved. So it’s very much about living that value of being one team.

Ben [00:10:26]:
In terms of the business development side of things, what have you been doing to get the word out there?

John Barron [00:10:31]:
Two things have worked well for us. It’s old school and new school, if you like. From an old-school perspective, we do a lot of conferences — CIPD, business wellness, those kinds of conferences. We fit into that space, or anything to do with preventative healthcare. Those are the kinds of conferences that we attend. We find that we get a lot of lead generation at those events.

John Barron [00:11:11]:
The other one is LinkedIn. We’re very fortunate that a lot of the companies we work with are very happy with the output of the challenges and they want to tell people about it. We’ve done some really cool videos which we post on LinkedIn. We did a great challenge recently with Grant Thornton in association with Make-A-Wish. Make-A-Wish Ireland is using GoChallenge.

They’ve got a challenge called Walk for Wishes, which is a lovely challenge. We’re powering that, and people get rewarded. Grant Thornton makes a financial contribution to the challenge for people who complete it. It’s very good.
What we found is that when we published that, we got more companies coming to us who have a charity partner and would like to do something in terms of fundraising that would involve everyone. That’s how we do it in terms of lead generation. Longer term, how we’re going to scale the business — we launched the business in 2023. Up to now, we’ve been selling directly, and that’s been great in terms of validating our brand and our technology, as you can imagine.

But longer term, we want to partner with companies that offer benefits, health insurance companies, and anyone in that HR sphere who would like to add a wellbeing dimension to their existing offering. We’d be very open to that, and we’re talking to a number of organisations in those spaces at the moment.

Ben [00:12:06]:
Yeah, very smart way to do it is to team up, certainly with the tech companies where it’s automatically embedded. So when someone buys one product, they get yours — or the option to turn it on, switch it on. And then with the conferences, I’ve heard a lot of people have hit and miss experiences. You just turn up as an attendee and walk around. Do you take a stand?

John Barron [00:12:21]:
Yeah, we take a stand, and we normally try to contact people in advance and set up a number of meetings before we go. We normally try to have about five meetings at least in the calendar before we go through these events. And then it’s amazing how many people you meet at them. We have a little game at the stand where it’s like a slot machine. Say Sydney comes up, and you have to guess how far away Sydney is from wherever the conference is. We’ve done some vibe coding to create this thing, and that’s always a bit of craic. Whoever gets the top prize, we normally give an Apple Watch or something like that to the winner. So again, it’s very old-school, Ben — just trying to get people to the stand. You know yourself, for every 10 people you speak to, maybe one or two will lead to something.

Ben [00:13:03]:
You’ve done the traditional outbound, I guess, in the early stages — contacting people. Do you still do that? And also, if you did it by email or messaging people, how do you do it? Do you just contact them and go, “Cool, hey, we’ve got this new thing. Can I tell you about it?” Or “Can I have a meeting?” What do you do? What’s your message?

John Barron [00:13:19]:
Normally what we do is we focus on the company’s values, and then we send the email. The body of the email is: “Look, we can help you live these values.” We know who our target customers are. They’re businesses that are mostly working in the smart economy, and most of them have adopted hybrid working. So they are experiencing this issue with connection. They understand it when we bring that up. We explain that we can connect your people no matter where they work.

One of the things that’s proven really popular with GoChallenge is that we have captains on the teams. Normally we suggest someone, maybe younger in the organisation, who’s shown a bit of potential, to help run the team. We give the captains ideas to help with engagement. One of the things is: on the day you’re in the office, tell your team you’re in the office and say, “Look, I’m in the office Friday. Anyone fancy going for a walk at lunchtime?” You would not believe how popular that’s proven, Ben.

People are craving that human connection, that bit of fun, that bit of chat, and just connecting. I think that’s what has shocked us since we launched the business — there are a lot of people struggling with that at the moment. A lot of people are on screens all the time. As I said at the start, you can see it in the zeitgeist. Whether it’s things like Parkrun, HYROX, or swimming in the sea in Ireland — which is very popular now — I think it’s all about connection. It’s about meeting people in a healthy environment.

One of our investors is an Australian gentleman, and one of the main reasons he invested in GoChallenge was that he said he exited a business a number of years ago. He said, “When I had my business, I had close to 700 people working for me.” He was saying that the Australian culture is very similar to Irish and maybe UK culture, in that a lot of our socialising at work revolves around alcohol. He said, “Not only is it unhealthy, but it’s also dangerous.” He said, “I don’t think we ever had a get-together that didn’t end badly, with something happening that shouldn’t have happened.”

And he said with GoChallenge, what we’re trying to do is create that social connection in a healthy way. There is definitely a demand for it. I think people want that at the moment, Ben. And that goes across age groups. People are sick of this. They want to meet people in the real world.

Ben [00:15:25]:
So finally then, you’ve been busy growing this business, GoChallenge. You must have picked up a few lessons and made a few mistakes along the way. What sort of advice would you have for other founders, CEOs, and leaders growing businesses in the broad HR sector? What advice would you have for them trying to expand, grow, and sell into the employer market?

John Barron [00:15:44]:
I think you’ve got to know your buyer. As I said, this is my second startup. My previous startup was a tech solution, and I was selling predominantly to men. This time around, I’m selling predominantly to women in the HR space. The directors and leaders in that space are predominantly women. And I find a number of things. One is that they’re incredibly busy, not only in their work life but also in their home life. So our messaging reflects that because they don’t want another job.

So we come in, we do everything end-to-end, and we do it in a confident, professional manner that reflects well on them and their team. They’re in safe hands, but they don’t have to do any extra work. So it’s very light touch. The other thing is something that you mentioned: they already have platforms in place in their organisation, and they don’t want another platform. What they want is something that integrates with their existing platform. So whether it’s Workvivo, Workhuman, Personio, or whatever they have in there, it’s music to their ears when we can say, “Oh look, we actually integrate with that already.” So there are a number of things there.

Know your buyer, know their pain points, and know what motivates them. It often isn’t price, Ben, that’s the fact. Often they’re willing to pay a premium for getting a better service — something that reflects well on them. The final bit is that integration piece. No one wants an extra platform, but they want something that integrates with their existing stack.

Ben [00:17:07]:
That’s great advice. And on that thing about “they don’t want another job” — the number of times I’ve heard people talk about, “Oh, we’ll give them a free this, or a free audit, or it’ll be a great rollout,” and all this. You are giving them more work to do, even if it’s free, because they need to block out time. They need to educate their line managers or convince the CEO and the board. The smart companies — if some of that is involved or required — make that slide deck for them, write out the script for supervisors, or just give them everything on a plate. It makes it super easy because they don’t need that hassle. So it sounds like you’ve really thought about that and made life easy for them.

John Barron [00:17:41]:
Lastly, I’ll just say once the challenge gets up and running, it’s not just the HR team — it’s often the internal communications team. Isn’t that interesting? The internal communications team are critical as well. If your company is big enough to have that, then in terms of, “Okay, week one, this is what we’re going to push out,” people are engaged all the way through the challenge. But the great thing is that we now have templates. It’s like a playbook, and they go, “Great, that’s great.” So again, it’s just trying to keep it as easy as possible for the people involved in the companies we’re working with.

Ben [00:18:11]:
Yeah, and with the internal comms team, they’ve got their own calendar and their own promotional stuff going on. So for you to overlay things showing that it’s all neatly calendarised or scheduled, I think it’s an excellent idea. John, where can people learn more about you and GoChallenge?

John Barron [00:18:25]:
So our website is www.GoChallenge.com, and I’m john@gochallenge.com if anyone wanted to contact me directly. I’d be happy to have a chat.

Ben [00:18:33]:
That’s fabulous. Congratulations on what you’ve achieved so far, but all the best for the future with it.

John Barron [00:18:37]:
Brilliant. Thank you, Ben, and thanks for your time very much. I appreciate it.

Topics covered: how to attract HR consulting clients, running a workplace consulting business, business growth strategies for consultants, HR consultants, workplace consultants, employee engagement

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