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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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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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National implementation trial of BeUpstanding – who is taking part?

BeUpstanding Stories

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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BeUpstanding: Who has taken part so far?

BeUpstanding Stories

BeUpstanding is a big project.  I mean really big.  Besides the main program of research and the associated NHMRC Implementation Trial, we have a range of students working on projects in the background, helping to expand the evidence base around what works to help people stand up, sit less and move more.  I’m Jason, one of the honours students involved in the BeUpstanding program. If you are an avid reader of our blog then you have met me before here. Today we are going dive into my research project which is focused on champion and workplace characteristics, and what these mean for successful implementation of BeUpstanding in your workplace. One of the key design features of BeUpstanding is the use of a ‘workplace champion’ in delivering the program workplace.  Workplace champions are individuals who nominated themselves (or have been nominated by their employer) that have the interest and the capacity to implement BeUpstanding in their workplace. Champions have been shown to be economical, effective at disseminating information and provide an important role model for staff. But who makes a successful champion? A range of studies have identified some skills and attributes that contribute to being a successful workplace champion. These include…

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UPDATE: Who’s Come On Board? (Sep.-Dec. ’17)

Toolkit stats

Update: September – December, 2017  We are back with some exciting updates for you on the BeUpstanding™ Champion Toolkit! The soft launch of the toolkit in September 2017 was well-received with 45+ champions signing up in the first 3 months – a fantastic result. These champions have taken the initiative to turn their workplaces into healthier work-spaces for their colleagues and themselves, with the key message of ‘sitting less and moving more’. Let’s look at some interesting facts and figures about our champions who have come on-board. The response from Queensland and Western Australia has been outstanding with 30% and 27% representation by champions respectively. New South Wales is not far behind. We are pleased with champion representation from the range of states and territories across Australia. With 70% of champions being female, women have ‘up stood’ men in the gender demographic (for now). Our youngest champion is only 21, whilst our eldest champion is 60 years of age – proving that healthier lifestyle choices can be made at any age. The public and private sectors are head-to-head in the drive to BeUpstanding™, with nearly 50% of our champions representing either sector. Moreover, it is not just metropolitan workplaces that are coming…

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