Engagement Technique: Hero Day
If you’ve ever worked in Sales, you’ve probably seen some version of this before. A themed “sales day” where the goal is to break a record. Most calls in the day? Most meetings booked? Highest revenue?
Usually added to fancy dress, music, spot prizes – some kind of spin-the-wheel, and someone dressed in a dodgy outfit shouting motivational guff at 9am. Sounds awful, from the outside, right?…
… or maybe, just maybe, if it was open to all, you might actually enjoy it?
Ok, hear me out, sceptic. These themed days work. They really can work. I appreciate they can feel very “old school”, and often alienate those outside of sales. If engagement is already low, badly run versions can drift into what employees see as forced fun, which is usually the fastest route to eye-rolling and fake enthusiasm.
That said, the core idea behind them is actually solid: shared focus, energy, momentum, and collective achievement.
So why should Sales have all the fun? How about a more inclusive version of this, where the whole company can get involved? Try Hero Day, where everyone can get involved!
What is Hero Day?
Hero Day takes the concept of a themed performance day and applies it across the business. Instead of only focusing on sales targets, each team picks a meaningful challenge or KPI they want to improve for the day.
The company rallies around it together. But it’s important to keep it light hearted, collaborative, and focused on momentum. Where you can get quick wins and keep it light – maybe at a typical lull point in the month rather than deadline day for a target!
Each team sets themselves a challenge for the day – and for some inspiration, here are what different departments could do:
Operations / IT / Finance
- Improve or simplify 10 internal processes
- Clear a backlog of admin tasks
- Reduce turnaround times
- “Ticket clearing day”
- Solve long-standing minor issues
- Improve documentation
- “Ding for cash in” collections day
- Clear invoice queries
- Speed up approvals
Recruitment / HR
- Book the most interviews
- Improve candidate feedback response times
- Rewrite job adverts
Marketing
- Create the best-performing social post
- Launch a campaign in a day
- Generate new content ideas
Customer Service
- Achieve response-time records
- Improve customer satisfaction scores
- Solve the oldest open tickets
You can then layer in team points, spot prizes, small rewards, themes, and friendly competition. Maybe tie it in with 10,000 hours, or the marginal gains piece we explored in this blog!
Themes
You can theme the day, and go as elaborate or as low key as you think appropriate. Some more serious offices might not appreciate the dressing up (although they just might surprise you!)
You could try: Superhero Day, Game Show Day, Eurovision, Sport (competitive nature helps here – maybe tie in with a sweepstake), Festival, Bake Off-style challenges – maybe even a Taskmaster crossover
It’s about friendly competition, a break from the routine, and a way to drive results in a pressure free environment. There’s the dopamine hit of the quick wins – who cares if we’re celebrating the low hanging fruit!
It also gives teams permission to celebrate progress publicly, which many workplaces rarely do. Sometimes people enjoy work more when there’s simply a bit more energy in the room. You can include people working remote here too!
What to watch out for
This one can go wrong quite easily if handled badly. A few important things:
- Don’t force enthusiasm: Not everyone enjoys high-energy workplace activities.
- Avoid humiliation culture: No public embarrassment for people who aren’t “playing along”.
- Keep it fair between teams: Different departments have different types of work. Make goals realistic and comparable.
- Don’t tie it too heavily to pressure: If it feels like disguised productivity squeezing, people will see through it instantly.
- Be careful with competitiveness: Friendly competition is good. Toxic competition isn’t.
Takeaway
Hero Day takes the energy of old-school sales incentive days and modernises it into something broader and more inclusive. At its best, it creates momentum, visibility, collaboration, and a shared sense of achievement across the company – it’s understood that at its worst, it becomes forced fun with a superhero cape. If your team are ready, try hero day!
This post is part of our Engagement Techniques series of practical, low-cost ideas to bring more connection and meaning into work. Find the rest here
👉 Want to explore techniques like this in more depth? I run interactive employee engagement workshops where we bring these ideas to life.