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What motivates desk workers to sit less and move more?

BeUpstanding Stories

How often do you find yourself sitting down for a long period of time? Due to the nature of our modern-day lives, this probably happens regularly. Maybe your job requires you to be seated at a computer for most of the day, or maybe you have found yourself reading BeUpstanding™ blog posts for hours. Do you want to be less sedentary and move more during your work time? If so, what motivates you to do this? Increased computerisation and modernisation of the working environment allows desk-based employees to complete most of their tasks seated. Too much sedentary time is now acknowledged as a public health concern, as well as an emerging work health and safety issue. Prolonged periods of sedentary time can increase the likelihood of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other lifestyle-related diseases, as well as detrimentally affect mental health. In contrast, regularly interrupting sedentary time, including by standing up, doing simple resistance activities (like going up and down on your toes), or going for a walk, can help reduce these impacts. The BeUpstanding™ program is designed to help create a culture where these regular movements, or a dynamic workplace, is the norm. Over 95% of participants in our…

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Preventing burnout – UQ medical students aiming to expand research on tools at your disposal

Latest evidence

Burnout: a pervasive and damaging condition Burnout is more than a trivial term to describe how you feel on Friday afternoon. In fact, a growing body of research suggests it is a chronic constellation of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced sense of accomplishment1. Importantly, burnout does not discriminate, and can affect people in all professions. Signs and symptoms of burnout: 2,3 Emotional symptoms Physical symptoms Behavioural signs Helplessness Lack of energy / fatigue Feeling negative or critical about your job Cynicism Change in sleep habits Irritability with colleagues or clients Self-doubt Unexplained physical discomfort such as headaches or bowel issues Reduced productivity Reduced satisfaction Change in appetites Using food, drugs or alcohol to cope Detachment Frequent illness Procrastination Loss of motivation Withdrawal or isolation Is it really that big of a problem? Due to multifactorial components and subjectivity of diagnostic criteria, it is difficult to accurately state how common burnout is in the general working population. Some estimates range up to 20%, but this is dependent on the defined cut off for a burnout diagnosis4. A 2020 report found a rate of burnout in medical physicians of around 43% 4. While burnout rates across various healthcare profession and medical…

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Maximise your health: programs to help get you started

Key resources

Did you know, in addition to BeUpstanding, there are a number of other health promotion programs that are freely available? Here are 9 health promotion programs that you can implement at your workplace, and 10 programs you can take part in individually. Workplace Health Programs BeUpstanding If you are a reader of this blog, hopefully you are very familiar with the BeUpstanding program – which supports desk-based workers to sit less and move more. As a BeUpstanding champion, you are provided everything you need through the online toolkit to take up, deliver and evaluate the program within your team. The program is suitable for all desk-based workers, no matter where they are working, with the ultimate aim to build a dynamic culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. If you haven’t run BeUpstanding yet, or if it has been over a year since you ran it last, why not sign up now. Queensland Healthy Kids Menu Initiative Do you work in a café, restaurant, hotel or club and wish to provide healthier options for children? Consider signing up to the Queensland Healthy Kids Menu initiative. After signing up and submitting your healthy  kids menu, you will be given promotional…

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What does and doesn’t work in gamification?

Latest evidence

A few weeks ago, this blog discussed how gamification might be used to support workers to sit less and move more. In this blog, Duncan Robertson reports on the second part of his literature review, which examined common features that worked and didn’t work for gamification, as well as some key considerations used to change behaviour using this approach. What works Social contact & social contracts: Referring back to the first of the three key psychological principals discussed in my previous blog, there are several social methods used in interventions that work well. For example, peer support between participants helps everyone reach their goal. Additionally, accountability between participants goes back to individuals being more motivated by loses than gains. Clearly defined goals: Interventions must provide participants with a purpose for participating. Clearly deciding on a reachable goal helps maintain motivation and engagement. An intervention that has been designed well can regularly adapt goals based on participant progress. For example, ensuring goal difficulty increases with participants progress in order to always provide a challenging activity. Friendly competition: Friendly competition between participants is encouraged. This can come in the form of leaderboards or a points system that everyone can see or is…

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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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Using gamification to help workers sit less and move more

Latest evidence

Here at team BeUpstanding we are always looking for new ways to support workers to sit less and move more. You may have already read some previous blogs on this subject, like this article on mobile apps. In this next part of the blog series, Duncan Robertson, a final year UQ Bachelor of Health Science student, explores how gamification may be used to support behaviour change in the workplace. Read about his findings below. Diving into the literature To build a greater understanding of how gamification in the workplace works I took a deep dive into the literature. From thousands of results, 42 pieces of literature with value were found across nine databases, ranging from peer reviewed academic papers to grey literature, such as blog articles and opinion pieces. These were categorised into a table and colour coded based on the usefulness of each paper with green being most useful, yellow as average, red as not so much and grey aptly being used to designate any grey literature included. The search mainly focused on the term’s ‘gamification’, ‘workplace’ and ‘physical activity’. Several variations of aforementioned search terms were used to find specific points of data including ‘sedentary behaviour’ ‘usefulness’, ‘effectiveness’,…

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Health Apps: The solution for a healthier lifestyle?

Latest evidence

These days there’s just about an app for everything, so what about an app that helps improve your health at the reach of your back pocket? One of the marvels of the 21st century, the smartphone has come to the limelight and with it, the plethora of mobile applications, or “apps” accessible at our fingertips. These days there’s just about an app for everything, setting your alarms, tracking your diet, searching the news, playing games; you name it, you got it. In the public health sphere, apps have also become an increasing area of interest, and at team BeUpstanding we have been exploring whether they might be a useful next step for helping work teams sit less and move more. At face value, mobile apps represent a very accessible and potentially cost-effective way of delivering health information and perhaps even more. As a result, there has been a boom in research regarding mobile applications and their effects on health outcomes. This article, written by Jason Lin as part his placement with the BeUpstanding team, provides a brief overview of the current evidence for mobile applications and what we might be able to look forward to in years to come. Scoping…

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Need a prompt to get up? We road tested some break apps for your computer and phone

The Evidence

So imagine this scenario: piping hot coffee on your desk, paperwork and pens strewn across your table, you sit in your swivel office chair and your hands eagerly move towards your keyboard. All of a sudden, your coffee has turned cold, fearful symptoms of repetitive strain injury start to show, four hours have passed and you realized you have not moved an inch away from your workstation. I assume there are some head nodding and sighs of agreement as you recall the last time this happened to you. It is easy to forget the amount of time you spend using your electronics, especially when you are knee deep in your work. Prolonged sitting for hours on end can lead to detrimental health risks like cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, as well as decreases in productivity and overall mood. However, if you are aware of the risks, and want to get up regularly, it can be easy to forget. Fortunately, there are many solutions available that can give that gentle nudge or prompt to change posture and ensure you move more when you work. For me personally, I have never relied on apps to keep myself accountable and struggle with…

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