This article is re-posted from a Sedentary Behaviour Research Network blog post on 3rd July 2019. Recently, research into the topic of excessive sitting, or “sedentary behaviour”, has been making headlines. The risk for chronic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, that comes with high levels of sitting is becoming more evident (1). Office workers represent a population that spend a significant amount of time in sedentary pursuits as a consequence of their occupation (2). As more research is being published on the topic, many workplaces are seeking non-sedentary alternatives and solutions to the traditional office environment to keep their employees as healthy and productive as possible. One such solution has been the implementation of activity-permissive workstations. Activity-permissive, or alternative, workstations replace a worker’s traditional desk and are broadly categorized into either standing desks or dynamic workstations. Standing desks allow for a worker to stand while performing a task (e.g., typing, clerical work), and can be installed as additions to an existing workstation, or as height-adjustable replacement units (see Figure 1). Dynamic workstations are designed to allow for activity or movement while working, and include a variety of alternative workstations, such as: treadmill desks, cycling desks, and dynamic sitting desks…
Six Strategies For Sitting Less
Six Strategies for Sitting Less Scratching your head on how your team can BeUpstanding? A recent study by Hadgraft and colleagues and published in the journal BMC Public Health, explored office workers attitudes around reducing workplace sitting. They also sought out workers opinions on a variety of strategies aimed at reducing occupational sitting, which were commonly identified from previous workplace interventions, and their perceived barriers to achieving this in the workplace. A number of strategies were viewed as acceptable and likely to be adopted by workers with some of the strategies addressing multiple influences on sitting and catering to a range of different jobs and preferences. Why not give some of the strategies a try in your workplace! Make use of standing meeting. Sick of sitting through endless meetings? Look to change it up by changing your posture. A standing meeting can be used for a quick check in with the team, while putting stand and stretch breaks into the agenda can help your team reset and refocus. Why not step it up by having a walking meeting for those one-on-one catch ups! Communicating face-to-face. Whenever there’s a short message to be conveyed to a co-worker, employees can tell the…
Standing Up To Sedentary Working
The following article was written by Sophie O’Connell and published in Occupational Health and Wellbeing on the 7th June 2019. The modern world and the constant pursuit of technological growth have almost eliminated the need for movement in our daily lives. While commuting we sit in our cars or on the bus; at work we sit at our computers or in meetings; during our leisure time we sit watching TV, playing computer games or socialising with friends. Because of technology advancements we do not even need to leave the comfort of our own homes to socialise, stay in touch with friends and family, to shop, to work or even be entertained on a screen. This means that, on average, Brits spend around 9.5 hours a day spent sitting. Typically, the amount of time spent sedentary each day increases with age. In working-age adults much of this sitting is done at work. Evidence shows that office-based workers spend around 75% of their working day sitting, with a third of sitting time being done for a prolonged period. Many of us are guilty of spending time sitting for extended periods due to work, travel or various social commitments. But with the growing…
What is the link between Stress, Team Cohesion, and BeUpstanding™?
At team BeUpstanding™, we are not only interested in how our program impacts on raising awareness, building culture, and changing behaviour to support workers to stand up, sit less, and move more, but also on its broader impact on health, productivity and wellbeing. The following blog is written by Jemieca Loeffler who undertook her honours with the BeUpstanding™ team here at the University of Queensland. She worked with some of our amazing champions and teams taking part in BeUpstanding™ to find out in a bit more detail if there was any impact of the program on occupational stress and group cohesion. What she found was that the more stressed employees were and the more cohesive they felt with their team, the less time they spent sitting at work and the more likely they were to engage in BeUpstanding™. Sound interesting? Read below to find out more! Some background info As we know, prolonged sitting can be detrimental for our health, and many of us fall victim to this public health concern through our jobs. A study by Thorpe et al. showed that call centre workers, in particular, are at highest risk of sedentariness, spending up to 90% of their work day sitting,…
BeUpstanding™ Champion – What’s That? And Can I Be One?
What’s a champion? A BeUpstanding™ workplace champion is the primary person who runs the BeUpstanding™ Program in their workplace. They get access to the BeUpstanding™ Champion Toolkit which provides free resources and a step-by-step easy to follow guide to help them run the program. The toolkit provides resources such as free posters, videos, and email templates to help create culture change in the workplace. From over 10 years of research, we know that in order to create change it is key to have a workplace champion leading the way. After all, one person really can make a difference! Who can be a champion? ANYONE who has the desire and capacity to run the BeUpstanding™ Program in their workplace can be a BeUpstanding™ champion! No, you do not have to be CEO or management to become a champion. As long as you have management approval, a passion to create a healthier work environment for you and your colleagues, and capacity to run the program, you’re good to go! We have had a wide variety of different champions from all types of workplaces sign up. You can check out the workplace characteristics here. Just to give you an idea… We have had champions from a…
Healthier Workplaces WA BeUpstanding Lunch ‘N’ Learn
Check out this amazing Lunch ‘N’ Learn seminar that Healthier Workplace WA held in November. It was led by Leon Straker who is a professor of Physiotherapy at the School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science at Curtin University. As an expert in the field, Leon provides a thorough review of the benefits of moving more and sitting less, and the dangers of too much sitting. He also gives a great overview of the BeUpstanding™ Champion Toolkit, what it means to take part in BeUpstanding™, and how you can start your BeUpstanding™ journey today. Lunch ‘N’ Learn seminars are a fun and engaging way to educate the workforce about the benefits of taking part in BeUpstanding™. They can also help people understand how the initiative can fit into their workplace. If you hold a session like this please share it with us! We love to hear your experiences and feedback so we can learn from you!
Benefits to heart health of reducing workplace sitting
We know that significant reductions in workplace sitting are achievable. But how does reducing sitting impact on workers’ health? We examined this using data from our Stand Up Victoria intervention – a 12 month intervention in office workers that used organizational-, environmental- (including sit-stand workstations) and individual-level approaches to reduce prolonged workplace sitting time in desk-based workers. What did we do? We recruited 14 work teams and over 200 workers (136 intervention; 95 control) from the one organisation to take part in this cluster randomised controlled trial. We measured 14 biomarkers of body composition, blood pressure, glucose metabolism, lipid metabolism and a composite overall cardio-metabolic risk score in both the intervention and control participants at three time points: before the intervention, after three months of the intervention (end of the intensive intervention phase), and after 12 months. What did we find? We found a significant, beneficial intervention effect for fasting glucose and the clustered metabolic risk score at the 12 month assessment. This beneficial effect for fasting glucose was mainly due to the control group getting worse over the 12 months. There were no significant intervention effects observed at 3 months. Notably, sitting was primarily replaced with standing. What does this…
UQ Commendation Award for Collaborators of the Year!
We have some exciting news! The BeUpstanding™ Team received a commendation award for collaborators of the year from the University of Queensland in the Faculty of Medicine. We are honoured that our hard work over the past year has been reconginised! We could not have done it without the participation and engagement of workplace champions and the support from our incredible industry partners (VicHealh, Queensland Office of Industrial Relations, Safe Work Australia, Heart Foundation / HeathierWorkplaceWA, and Comcare). We have been working hard and have exciting things planned in 2018 that we cannot wait to share with you! To be one of the first to know, sign up to our newsletter (at the bottom of this page). Pictured are just some of our Outstanding Upstanding team. Image (Left to right): Genevieve Maher, Jennifer Warren, Brianna Fjeldsoe, Ana Goode (Program Translation Leader), Genevieve Healy (Principal Investigator), Anne Bannister, Sheleigh Lawler.
The Lighter Side of LiveLighter – Sit Less with Damian Callinan
This short video by LiveLighter had us laughing. Check out comedian Damian Callinan tips to get staff moving!
Policies relating to occupational sedentary behaviour?
Your workplace is likely to have policies regarding leave, fire safety, employment conditions, etc. etc. but what about sedentary work? Dr Pieter Coenen led a qualitative review of existing national and international occupational safety and health policies relating to occupational sedentary behaviour. He concluded that although there were no occupational authority policies that focused specifically on sedentary behaviour, there were a relevant aspects of existing policies that could be modified to address occupational sedentary behaviour. Do you have a policy addressing occupational sitting in your workplace? Please share your story with us.