PagerDuty Inc.

06/16/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/17/2025 01:11

Stepping for Change: How PagerDuty’s Employee-Led Wellness Challenge Creates a Purpose-Driven Culture and Lasting Impact

Answering the Call: How a LinkedIn Post Sparked a Global Movement

In early 2021, Humanity Matters sent out an urgent request for help on LinkedIn. The COVID-19 pandemic had hit Australia hard, with intense lockdowns leaving young people more isolated than ever. For youth with challenging family backgrounds, the pandemic exacerbated their daily struggles. Humanity Matters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building connected communities for vulnerable and disengaged young people, needed all the help it could get to support its community and the youth population through the unprecedented public health crisis.

When it mattered most, PagerDuty's Australia-based Community Responders-our volunteer social impact ambassadors who embody our company values and commitment to local communities-answered the call. As PagerDuty leaders who collaborate with the PagerDuty.org team, they help deploy grant funds and partner with local organizations to create purpose-driven regional in-person gatherings and virtual events. When the opportunity arose, they jumped at the chance to mobilize PagerDuty funding and our engaged workforce to drive meaningful change.

Step-tember: A Wellness Challenge with Purpose

Led by Alexis "AJ" Dullard and Emma Alcock, two employees and long-time Community Responders, the company rallied around the idea of a step challenge-a wellness competition and fundraiser that would bring teams together across PagerDuty in support of the charitable cause.

"We proposed the idea to the business and kicked off the program in September of 2021. In that first year, we raised about AU$25,000, which for a charity of eight people, helped them stay afloat," said Alexis "AJ" Dullard, who currently serves as an Enterprise Account Manager & Sales Development Team Lead at PagerDuty.

What began as a local response to an urgent need has evolved into a beloved, high-impact annual company tradition that now provides employees the chance to:

  • MOVE: Join a global employee engagement and wellness challenge
  • LEARN: Hear about about PagerDuty's nonprofit customers and technology impact in communities
  • FUNDRAISE: Support and amplify corporate-purpose programming via an impactful fundraiser for charities
  • CONNECT: Participate in friendly and fierce competition between cross-functional teams, including executives

From Corporate Initiative to Community Transformation

Since its inception, Step-tember has generated a grant total of US$92,000 in employee donations and company match dollars to support Humanity Matters and other PagerDuty global nonprofit customers, including Crisis Text Line and Trek Medics International . In 2024 alone, 602 PagerDuty employees banded together in teams to raise nearly AU$42,000, or about US$ 27,000 for Humanity Matters , NAMI , and Nexleaf Analytics . Through this challenge, employees not only transformed their daily steps into meaningful action, but they also broadened their perspective as they learned about the impact their efforts create in their community.

"Understanding the various ways charitable funds can support a broad range of causes and seeing how charities innovate to find solutions, highlights the diverse set of challenges people face in their daily lives," said Emma Alcock, Director of Commercial Operations at PagerDuty. "It helps you understand people's hardships and what you take for granted."

"The partnership with PagerDuty has made a world of difference in our ability to support young people in Australia," said Selim Ucar, Humanity Matters Chief Executive Officer. "Funding from Step-tember has helped us to expand our streetwork and outreach services, reconnecting disengaged youth with their communities and offering training opportunities for those at risk of falling through the cracks. We have also used the PagerDuty Operations Cloud to connect our 24/7 service to first responders, providing them with access to a youth worker who can support young people in need. We are incredibly grateful for the ongoing support from PagerDuty."

Empowering Local Champions, Driving Global Change

Today, September is the time PagerDuty employees around the world to come together to win bragging rights for the most steps across the month, share photos of their incredible adventures with colleagues, raise donations for inspiring causes, and learn about how PagerDuty's technology and grant funds help address critical needs in our local and global communities-and it's only possible because of the strong leadership of PagerDuty's local social impact champions.

"It's incredible to see the participation rate increase and the whole company getting behind this event. It's broadening the awareness of local charities and others across the world, which has been really valuable to our communities and culture at PagerDuty," said Dullard.

A Call to Action: Building a Global Culture through Local Champions

Seek to foster a strong culture of giving back by partnering with passionate employees to find a globally inclusive activity-one everyone, from anywhere, can participate in-that elevates charitable causes and nonprofit customers. By empowering and equipping local Community Responders, PagerDuty has built a globally inclusive Employee Impact program that enables employees to address local needs. With support from PagerDuty.org's Community Responders Program and donation matching, our employees worldwide embody our values by driving positive change in their communities, one step at a time.

PagerDuty Inc. published this content on June 16, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 17, 2025 at 07:11 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io