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Who are our small businesses taking part in BeUpstanding?

BeUpstanding Stories

Small business is one of the priority sectors that we are targeting for our national implementation trial of BeUpstanding. In a previous blog, Bernice Chong reported on why small business is one of our priority sectors. In this blog, she looks at the characteristics of the small businesses taking part in BeUpstanding. Over 100 Australian small businesses (defined as fewer than 20 employees) have championed this cause and partnered with the BeUpstanding team in tackling prolonged sitting in their workplace. Qualitative studies on champion and staff experiences doing the BeUpstanding program found improvements in knowledge/awareness about sitting, cultural norms, perceived stress, productivity, and resilience, benefitting team culture and staff wellbeing. This aligns with current research that reported reducing sitting and increasing movement promotes worker health, safety and wellbeing with positive impacts on productivity, staff morale and talent attraction and retention. The average Australian adult spends a large amount of time each day sitting at work. 75% of the average Australian’s workday is spent sitting. This substantial percentage makes the workplace an ideal target for intervention to reduce excessive sitting. The characteristics of the small business teams taking part in BeUpstanding A total of 132 Australian small businesses have registered their interest…

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Mix it up for musculoskeletal health: a webinar

BeUpstanding Stories

One of BeUpstanding’s lead investigators, Associate Professor Genevieve Healy, presented at the recent national Musculoskeletal Disorders Symposium in June. The event was held virtually and hosted by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, on behalf of the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities in Australia, and featured international and national experts, industry case studies, and online exhibitors with the theme of MSD prevention by design. Genevieve’s presentation titled “Addressing sedentary behaviour: occupational sitting, an emerging workplace health and safety issue” focused on why excessive sedentary time has now been acknowledged as an emergent health and safety issue and potential solutions for supporting workers to sit less and move more. Genevieve also presented some early findings from the BeUpstanding national implementation trial we have currently underway, that are showing reductions in self-reported musculoskeletal discomfort scores in three areas (Lower back; Upper back, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, or hands; and hips, thighs, buttocks, knees, ankles, or feet), with nearly a 15% relative reduction overall. Promising early results! You can now view the presentation as well as some of the other presentations via this link. Happy watching!

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Small but Significant: Why BeUpstanding thinks Australian Small Business is a Priority

BeUpstanding Stories

Small business is one of the priority sectors that we are targeting for our national implementation trial of BeUpstanding. But why is small business identified as a key sector? Bernice Chong is doing her health promotion placement for her Master of Health Psychology with the BeUpstanding team, investigating the unique considerations of running workplace health promotion programs like BeUpstanding in a small business team. In this first blog in her series, she looks at why small business is one of our priority sectors. What do we mean by small business? Small businesses are substantial contributors to the Australian economy and private sector employment, employing close to 5 million people. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines small business under the following categories: Micro businesses (those with 0-4 employees), including sole proprietors and partnerships, and non-employing businesses. Small businesses (those with 5-19 employees) Employment growth in small business have been increasing over the years, accounting for just under 60 per cent of total employment growth in the private sector between June 2013 and June 2018. This is a sizeable and growing group of employers and employees that could be targeted for workplace health promotion interventions in Australia, such as BeUpstanding. However,…

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The impact of COVID-19 on staff taking part in BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

In a previous article, we looked at how COVID-19 had impacted champions implementing the BeUpstanding program in the workplace. The snapshot survey found that working from a home environment, team communication, keeping staff motivated and increased workload during COVID-19 were the biggest challenges to implementing the program. Since COVID-19, 56% of champions reported their team had temporarily paused the program. In this article, we examine the impacts of COVID-19 on staff. Data were from a survey we sent in May 2020 to staff participating in the BeUpstanding program. The survey asked about sitting and activity behaviours, working arrangements, and health and wellbeing now and before COVID-19. Only staff whose teams were participating in the national implementation trial of the program, and who had already completed the needs assessment element of the program, were eligible. A total of 38 survey responses were received and are reported on below. Working Arrangements On average, staff worked approximately 40 hours/week before and during COVID-19. While there was no significant change in work hours, there was a major transition from working in the office to working from home with 97% working mostly or completely at the workplace pre COVID-19 and 87% reporting working mostly or…

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Why are workplaces wanting to BeUpstanding? Part 2: Knowledge and the Environment

BeUpstanding Stories

As part of the sign-up process to the BeUpstanding program, we ask workplace champions what they aim to achieve with the program. We have had our clever UQ psychology students analysing the responses and sorting the findings into main themes. In a previous blog article we reported on two of the most common themes, which were around improving health and wellbeing and supporting workers to sit less and move more. In this blog, Gilbert Leung examines findings around the themes of knowledge and environment. A quick recap on methods We received and analysed over three hundred responses regarding what teams hoped to achieve by taking part in BeUpstanding. Our team independently identified key response topics and grouped them into wider themes. We then came up with the final list of six themes: knowledge, behaviour, culture, health, work, and environmental change. We then coded all the responses into their corresponding themes. Some of the responses only applied to one of the themes, while some could be applied to several. We founds six key themes: This article focuses on responses around the themes of knowledge and environment. Responses themed around knowledge Do you remember how long you sat during work yesterday? Do…

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The impact of COVID-19 on BeUpstanding Champions: a snapshot survey

BeUpstanding Stories

COVID-19 has changed the way we live, connect and work. During these unprecedented times, significant changes within the workplace have been taken to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and ensure the health and safety of our communities. Here at team BeUpstanding we recognise that changes in the workplace and business operations presents new opportunities and challenges for BeUpstanding Champions and their teams. To understand this further, and to inform how the BeUpstanding program could be adapted to meet current and future needs that reflect the changing working environment, we conducted a quick snapshot survey with champions and teams taking part in the BeUpstanding implementation trial. The survey was sent in May 2020 when the COVID-19 situation was still rapidly changing in the Australian context. UQ Master of Public Health student, Sidara Engelhardt, has been conducting a deep dive into the findings from the snapshot survey sent to the champions – check out his summary of the findings below. Our participants The survey was sent to 65 champions with 27 completing the survey. Participating champions were predominantly from Queensland (48%) and New South Wales (33%) with representation also from Victoria (4%), Western Australia (8%) and South Australia (7%). Responding champions had…

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Why are Workplaces wanting to BeUpstanding? Part 1: Health and Behaviour

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program has just celebrated its 3rd birthday. Designed to support workers to sit less and move more for their health and wellbeing, the program has seen over 650 workplaces sign up and over 45,000 employees exposed to the sit less, move more messaging. But why do workplaces want to take part in BeUpstanding in the first place, or, more specifically, what do they aim to achieve by taking part? Now, thanks to the efforts of three UQ psychology students, we have been able to unpack just why work teams want to BeUpstanding. Their findings will be discussed in a series of blog articles. This first article examines health and behavioural aims and was written by Nicole Delmo, a UQ psychology honours student. So, what did we do? As part of the sign-up process for BeUpstanding, workplace champions are asked “What are you hoping to achieve by your work team taking part in BeUpstanding?”. This is an open text question, meaning that champions can write as much as they want in their response. We analysed 332 responses to this question using a process called ‘thematic analysis’. First, we independently identified the topics present in the responses and grouped them…

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Wherever you work, a safe and healthy workplace is for everyone

BeUpstanding Stories

By now we all know that the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused an unprecedented change in how and where people are working. Helping people to sit less and move more at work has been a key priority in recent years, with much of the focus being on the office workplace. The phrases ‘pre-COVID’ and ‘COVID-normal’ are thrown around a fair bit these days, but perhaps they are a fitting way to describe the shift that many desk-based workers have experienced. Even for those who have now returned to their workplaces, the ‘pre-COVID’ work environment is likely to be quite different to the ‘COVID-normal’ workplaces many are now working in. Other workers have seen a complete (perhaps long term) shift to working remotely, or a mix of both. What remains, however, is the need to ensure a safe and healthy workplace for everyone. We do not yet know the long-term impacts of these current changes to our work environment, but we do know that there is a clear need to continue to help workers to be able to sit less and move more, regardless of where they are working. The term ‘desk-based workers’ rather than ‘office workers’ is a term we often…

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National implementation trial of BeUpstanding – who is taking part?

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The BeUpstanding program is currently being evaluated in the context of a national implementation trial. With over 100 consents into the trial, we are seeing participation from across the country and across all our priority sectors: call centres, small business, regional/remote, blue collar and government. So what do we know about who is taking part so far? We have taken a quick peek at some of our data. Over 60% of teams so far in the trial are from large (200-1999 employees) or very large (2000+ employees) organisations. The majority of teams (85%) have some level of access to sit-stand workstations; however, only 12% have reported that all of the staff have a sit-stand workstation. Generally, champions report moderate (63%) or high (32%) stress levels in their team, while 65% report that their team has a moderate level of motivation to sit less. So far, the majority of champions taking part in the trial are female (74%). Most also have an occupational health and safety role within their organisation (69%) and have experience in delivering a health promotion program (61%). Champions taking part in the trial are a mix of employees (43%), middle management / team leader (40%) and senior…

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Happy 3rd Birthday BeUpstanding!

BeUpstanding Stories

On September 1st, BeUpstanding celebrated three years of going online. In that time, we have had over 650 workplaces unlock the toolkit, with potentially more than 56,000 staff exposed to the program! We have also published over 100 blogs! Of course, the journey to supporting workers to sit less and move more has been a lot longer than that, spanning over a decade and resulting in a substantial body of evidence into what works. The data collected through BeUpstanding is making an important contribution to this evidence base as it is examining how well the program works when it is delivered in a widely-accessible format and without direct support from researchers. Key questions we are interested in are: who is taking up the program, how are they running the program, how effective is the program, the costs of the program, and the sustainability of any changes. We received funding from the NHMRC Partnership Project scheme to address these questions in the context of a national implementation trial. Teams who sign up to the trial must commit to completing all the evaluation elements in the program, as well as complete an additional evaluation approximately 9 months after program completion to understand…

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