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What did champions like about the BeUpstanding program?

BeUpstanding Stories

Upon completing the 8-week implementation phase of BeUpstanding, champions are asked to fill out a program completion survey via the BeUpstanding toolkit. The survey asks various questions about what strategies they did as a team, facilitators and barriers to implementing the strategies, as well as their experience as a champion in delivering the program. As part of our evaluation of BeUpstanding, we are looking at what worked well in the program and what aspects of the program workplace champions liked. This articles summarises champion responses to the question “What did you like about the BeUpstanding Program?” The easy to follow and simple structure of the program, along with the resources and information provided in the toolkit were key aspects of the program champions enjoyed, as highlighted by the following champion responses: “Ease of implementation, no cost, good resources. Ability to implement from home and in our purpose-designed office space.” “Easy to follow, well structured. Posters were great and the toolkit was well thought out and put together.” “Easy to implement and tailor to suit the work environment & people’s abilities.” “Resources that were engaging and easy to access and use” “Clear, structured weekly guide about what to do.” Another feature…

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How do BeUpstanding teams choose their top 3 strategies to stand up, sit less and move more?

BeUpstanding Stories

One of the key components of the BeUpstanding program is to hold a staff consultation workshop with all team members. The aim of the workshop is to provide information about the program to staff, give them the opportunity to discuss potential ways in which they can stand up, sit less, and move more at work, and the collectively select three top strategies to implement as a team during the 8-week program and beyond. Ideally the workshop is held in-person, however, we know that COVID and other factors have affected how and where people work.  As a result, an in-person staff workshop was not always possible for the teams taking part in our national trial of BeUpstanding and teams conducted this consultation and gained staff input in various ways. As part of our research, we are interested in finding out how staff were engaged in decision making around potential BeUpstanding strategies. This data was obtained via the program completion survey that workplace BeUpstanding champions completed upon finishing the 8-week implementation phase of the program. In the survey, champions were asked how they gained input from staff on how they wanted to BeUpstanding (in addition to or instead of the staff workshop),…

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Champion Insights – Barriers to engaging management and staff in BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

Implementing a well-being program in a workplace can come with some challenges, one of which can be engaging staff and/or management in the program. As part of the national trial of BeUpstanding we are interested in learning what some of the barriers were in relation to engaging staff and management in the BeUpstanding program, a workplace champion led program aimed at supporting staff to sit less and move more in the workplace. As part of the program completion survey that BeUpstanding Champions complete upon finishing the 8-week implementation phase of the BeUpstanding program, they are asked the following question: “Tell us about any barriers to engaging management or staff in the BeUpstanding program that you have noticed”. The changes associated with working from home due to COVID-19, namely the lack of visibility and the lack of equipment, were identified as common barriers. It’s hard to get everyone on board.  Working from home made it more challenging – less visibility. Some staff were working from home during the program where they didn’t have sit to stand desks and fellow workers to encourage more movement. A lack of time/being too busy, and only having support from some levels of management, were also…

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BeUpstanding Champion Perspectives: What Makes a Good Champion

BeUpstanding Stories

In a previous blog article titled ‘What makes a good champion’ we wrote about some of the qualities that make an effective workplace champion. Previous research suggests that those who have a genuine passion for health and wellbeing and are enthusiastic about the opportunity to inspire others towards a healthier lifestyle (Healy et al., 2018) are the most effective champions. They must also be committed to making long-term positive health changes in their workplace and display a good relationship with their peers. More general personality traits like outgoingness and motivation have been positively linked to champion performance (Howell, 2005). Highly motivated individuals are also more likely to engage with the content and be prepared to persist when faced with challenges. As part of the survey champions complete after finishing the 8-week BeUpstanding Program, they are asked what qualities or characteristics they believe make an effective champion in the BeUpstanding program, as well as what characteristics and qualities they possess that they feel helped them be a champion for their team. Common attributes identified by champions that they believe make a good BeUpstanding champion, based on their experiences, included motivated, approachable, committed, and positive. These qualities and others can be seen…

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Champion Insights – How BeUpstanding has Impacted Workplace Culture

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program was developed to support work teams to address the emergent work health and safety issue of excessive sitting.  Through taking part in the program, it is hoped that the various strategies teams implement to sit less and move more in the workplace lead to sustainable changes in their organisation and create a culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. In order to evaluate the impact of BeUpstanding, champions taking part in the national trial of BeUpstanding complete a survey through the online toolkit at three timepoints in the trial – prior to launching the program, upon completion of the 8-week program, and 12 months after launching the program. Champions also take part in a phone call with a member of the BeUpstanding team at these same time points and are asked a series of questions about their experience. During their 12-month sustainability phone call with a BeUpstanding team member, champions were asked the following question about their workplace; “To what extent do you feel the workplace culture and norms have changed to support sitting less and moving more?” Here are some of their responses: “We include the BeUpstanding program as part of our induction…

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Champion Insights – Maintaining Strategies to Sit Less and Move More

BeUpstanding Stories

One of the core goals of BeUpstanding is to assist workplaces to create a culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. This means not only looking at individual changes that desk-based workers can make but also helping workplaces to make sustainable changes to the work environment, policy and culture. In order to find out how workplace champions and their teams have gone with maintaining the original strategies they chose during the program to sit less and move more, champions that are taking part in the BeUpstanding trial are asked to complete a maintenance workplace audit 12 months after commencing the BeUpstanding program.  At this time they are also contacted by the BeUpstanding team via phone to discuss how their team and workplace have gone with maintaining their strategies. This article looks at some of the feedback from champions who have completed this 12-month phone call and maintenance workplace audit questionnaire and describes the types of strategies champions reported to have been successfully maintained in their workplaces. It also explores some of the supporting factors to maintaining changes to move more in the workplace and some of the common challenges champions experienced. To date, we have had 36…

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How our early adopters helped to shape BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program is based on over a decade of evidence into what works to help support desk-based workers sit less and move more. The foundation for the program was the Stand Up Victoria study, a randomised controlled trial where the research team delivered the intervention components and ran the evaluation. The initial translation of this intervention into an online program that uses a “train-the-champion” approach to guide workplace champions to deliver and evaluate the program themselves has been previously described, showing that it was effective and acceptable. In the latest paper from the BeUpstanding team we report on Phase 3 of the translation process – our early adopters of the program. What were we evaluating in Phase 3? Phase 3 ran from when we first went “live” with the program on September 1st, 2017 until the start of the national implementation trial in mid June 2019. The purpose of this phase was to test the sign-up process and the new platform that we had developed to be able to deliver and evaluate the program. We also wanted to evaluate the extent to which the program and processes were “fit-for-purpose” for our national implementation trial. To test this, we did…

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How supportive are Australian workplaces for sitting less and moving more?

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program is about supporting desk-based workers to sit less and move more. However, sitting and moving behaviour at work is influenced by a lot of different things besides individual preferences, including job roles and tasks, the social environment (including whether other people are regularly up and about), policies (such as flexible work hours), and the physical environment (such as access to safe and well-lit stairs). To be able to design effective strategies to encourage desk-based workers to ‘sit less and move more’, there is the need to not only understand what factors influence sitting and activity time at work, but also their availability within workplaces. For example, it is not much use designing an intervention around centralising printers if nearly all workplaces have already done that, or have gone paperless. What did we do? As part of the BeUpstanding program, we ask workplace champions to complete an audit of their workplace. The audit asks about the presence (or not) of a range of factors to support sitting less and moving more. We recently published an article reporting on the audit findings from 291 champions (representing 230 organisations) who had completed the workplace audit.  We looked at the prevalence…

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What our international teams are aiming to achieve with BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

Although BeUpstanding was initially designed to target Australian based workplaces, the program is available globally. To date, we have had over 160 teams from 35 countries outside of Australia sign up to the program. Most of the teams are from the United Kingdom and the United States, however, we also have teams from the Czech Republic, Malaysia and Switzerland taking part in our program. As part of the sign-up process, users are asked what they are aiming to achieve from the program. In previous blog articles (Part 1 & Part 2), we have examined what our Australian teams responded to this question. In this article, Bachelor of Health Sciences placement student Rou Jing Tham dives into the data from our international organisations. Data used and key findings: When users sign up to the BeUpstanding program, one of the questions that they were asked is ‘What are you hoping to achieve by your work team taking part in BeUpstanding?’ We explored the responses that we have received so far from our international teams and identified four main reasons: (1) to improve the working atmosphere; (2) to improve health and wellbeing; (3) to increase awareness; and, (4) to change the working environment.  Create…

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