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Interventions to reduce occupational sedentary time – review evidence

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A research group has recently published two meta-analyses – one on the effects of active workstations on reducing work sedentary time, and one examining the effectiveness of multi-component interventions to reduce workplace sedentary behaviour. Meta-analyses combine the results from multiple studies, and thus can provide higher quality evidence than a single study. They can also provide information on how consistent the effect of an intervention is when tested in different populations and different settings. Active workstations include sit-stand desks, under-desk cycles and treadmill desks. The first review examined the impact of different types of active workstation interventions on work-specific sedentary time. Concomitant strategies, such as prompting or individual support as well as multicomponent approaches, were also considered. A total of 23 eligible studies with 1428 office workers were included in the review. The meta-analysis showed that compared to a typical desk (i.e., a non-active one), sit-stand workstations either by themselves, or when used as part of a multi-component intervention or with promotion (e.g., prompts) were effective at reducing work sedentary time in office workers, as were treadmill workstations when used with promotion. Notably, multicomponent interventions and active workstations plus promotion showed greater effectiveness than active workstations alone – a finding consistent with…

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Creativity in motion

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It’s ten minutes from lunch and you’ve just finished a long meeting. Toward the end of the meeting, a new project proposal was raised by your manager. This project is different to your average work project and requires consideration of factors not typically present within your usual work. You ran out of time in the meeting to brainstorm as a team, so your manager encouraged you to think about possible ways to creatively and effectively approach the project between now and the next meeting. Your options for the next ten minutes are: Quickly return to your desk and use the time to tick off some easy tasks before lunch. Stay in the board room and write down some strategies for the project proposal while it’s fresh. Take a ten-minute walk and verbally brainstorm your ideas. If you picked option “3”, you might just come up with the most amount of appropriately novel (or creative) ideas. How? A study by researchers from Stanford University tested university students’ ability to produce creative ideas from either a seated or a walking condition. It was found that those who switched from sitting to walking in their second trial, produced more novel and quality ideas…

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Moving for your mind

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We’ve all heard that moving is good for our bodies and that the more we do it, the better. Being active not only supports circulatory, muscular and skeletal system health, helping to make us fitter and stronger, it also has the power to reduce the likelihood of some cancers developing. So, what about our minds? What happens to our mental wellbeing when we are physically active? It turns out, exercise can play a key role in reducing the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Even for moderate to severe cases of depression or for those experiencing chronic health or neurological conditions, where the risk of developing depression is greater. Exercise can also help with improving our sleep quality, which can be impacted by depression and anxiety. And whilst engaging in regular physical activity in leisure time not only helps to reduce symptoms of depression in adults, it may even play a role in preventing depression from developing. So, how much physical activity is ‘enough’? And can we count the house-work? The Australian Government recommends that the average adult should aim for 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate intensity physical activity each week or 1.25 to 2.5 hours of vigorous intensity…

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Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep Quality

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High-quality sleep is an important factor in sustaining health and improving well-being. Previous evidence has demonstrated the positive associations between increased physical activity and reduced sedentary behaviour (SB) with sleep quality. In a recent study published in Scientific Reports in January 2023, researchers in Japan aimed to explore the relationship between sedentary behaviour (SB), light-intensity physical activity (LPA), moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sleep quality in middle-aged adults. The study used an isotemporal substitution approach to examine the relationship between physical activity and sleep quality. This approach involves replacing one type of activity with another while keeping the total amount of time spent active the same. The participants were middle-aged adults who wore accelerometers to objectively measure their daily time spent in sedentary behaviour, light physical activity (LPA), and MVPA. They also completed self-reported questionnaires to assess their rest by sleep and sleep quality. The results of the study showed that each 60-minute unit of sedentary time or LPA replaced with MVPA was associated with improved rest by sleep in women. However, there were no significant associations found between physical activity levels and sleep measures in men across all three models. The study highlights the importance of considering substitutional relationships…

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A Menu of Strategies to Reduce Sitting and Promote Activity

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It has been well established that high levels of sitting can negatively impact on health and wellbeing, including increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. Workplace sitting time has been recognised as an emergent occupational health and safety risk, with research now dedicated to finding effective, feasible and cost-effective strategies to reduce sitting time and promote activity. To date, only two studies (Brakenridge et al. 2018; Stephens et al., 2018), have evaluated sitting-reduction strategy use in workplace interventions and the effectiveness of strategy selection on behaviour change outcomes.  Both these studies are authored by members of the BeUpstanding team: Dr Charlotte Brakenridge and Dr Samantha Stephens. What were these studies about? These two studies evaluated what strategies workers chose during the intervention, and whether these strategies led to reductions in sitting time and/or increases in activity. Dr Brakenridge worked collaboratively with a workplace champion at one large organisation to understand the impact of organisational support, wearable technology, as well as other behaviour change strategies, on workplace sitting and activity time. Within this study, the workplace champion delivered the intervention and provided support to promote the strategies, specifically: walking meetings; standing in meetings and using the stairs instead of…

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How 2 minute activity breaks during the workday can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease

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In a typical week in the office, workers on average can spend 30 hours of their workday sitting, with much of this accrued in prolonged, unbroken bouts. Sedentary behaviours, such as sitting, increases ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL–C), decreases ‘good’ cholesterol (HDL–C) levels and increases the risk of abnormal glucose metabolism. These physiological markers can contribute to an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease mortality, and diabetes. Previous studies have found that regularly breaking up prolonged sitting with activity breaks can have benefit for these indicators of cardiometabolic health in a laboratory setting. However, the impacts of regular breaks in an office setting are less clear. One simple way to increase breaks in prolonged sitting is to schedule short 2-minute activity breaks throughout the day by climbing stairs. A recent pilot study published in BMC Public Health Journal investigated the feasibility of introducing prompted stair climbing exercise breaks into the workplace and assessed any resulting improvements in glucose and cholesterol levels. It also evaluated the acceptability of such activity as an interruption of their work. What was done? Over eight weeks, 16 sedentary office workers from the United Kingdom (five females) took part in this quasi-experimental research study. Blood samples were taken…

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Sitting time under A-REST for police employees in the UK

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Police officers and staff are a workplace population with unique challenges when it comes to reducing time spent sitting. A recent study conducted at the Bedfordshire Police Headquarters in the UK investigated whether it is feasible to implement an intervention to reduce and break up prolonged sitting time among police employees. What was the intervention? The A-REST intervention (Activity to Reduce Excessive Sitting Time) was a multi-component, 8-week program informed by the Behaviour Change Wheel. It included components such as an education session, behaviour change booklet, electronic prompts, health champion, weekly emails, a smartphone app for self-monitoring, and individual feedback on behaviour. Additionally, a stand-out component was a team competition with a trophy.  Winners of the trophy were calculated by using a series of QR codes posted throughout the research site which participants scanned to log breaks from sitting. This study is the first of its kind to use such a competition using QR codes as a tool to reduce and break up sitting time. Interestingly, A-REST did not utilise sit-stand desks, despite these becoming very common in workplace sitting interventions. While feasibility and acceptability of the intervention were the primary goals, workplace and daily sitting, standing and steps, cardiometabolic…

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Can we transfer what works in the office to the home work environment?

Latest evidence

COVID-19 has brought about massive shifts in working practices resulting in many employees now working at home/remote working at least some days of the week. While there have now been a number of studies addressing prolonged sitting at the workplace, how these strategies translate to the home work environment is less well understood.  An article titled ‘What works to reduce sedentary behavior in the office, and could these intervention components transfer to the home working environment?: A rapid review and transferability appraisal’ was recently published in Frontiers in sports and active living to help understand this issue. The aim of the review was to build on existing evidence to identify what works to reduce sedentary behaviour in an office environment, and consider whether these could be transferrable to support employees working at home. The results of a systematic search of databases CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, PsycInfo, CINHAL, and SportDiscus from 10 August 2017 to 6 September 2021 were added to the references included in a 2018 Cochrane review of office based sedentary interventions. Informed by the Behavior Change Wheel, the most commonly used intervention functions and behavior change techniques were identified from the extracted data. Finally, a sample of common intervention strategies were…

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Standing desks alongside other measures cut office workers’ sitting time by an hour a day

Latest evidence

Using a standing desk alongside a package of other measures to encourage office workers to sit less and move more, reduced sitting time by about an hour a day over one year, finds a trial published in The BMJ. These measures were also linked to small (though not clinically meaningful) improvements in stress, wellbeing, and energy levels at work. BeUpstanding team members Professors Genevieve Healy and David Dunstan were part of the research team that was led by A/Prof Charlotte Edwardson from The University of Leicester in the UK. What was the study about? The randomised controlled trial was evaluating the impact of the Smart Work and Life intervention with and without a sit-stand workstation, compared to a comparison group. The Smart Work and Life intervention is designed to support desk-based workers to sit less and move more, both in the workplace and at home. The trial involved 756 office workers from two councils in Leicester, three in Greater Manchester, and one in Liverpool. Similar to BeUpstanding, the Smart Work and Life (SWAL) intervention uses workplace champions to deliver the intervention. Those in the intervention group were given a range of resources to help them reduce their sitting time, and highlight…

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How your input is helping build BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program is based on over a decade of research evidence into what works to help desk workers to sit less and move more. Throughout the program we have worked with multiple stakeholders, including current and potential users of the toolkit, employees, managers, and policy and practice partners, to continue to improve the program. We recently published a scientific article describing this user centred design process and how it was used to adapt the program to be ready for the national implementation trial. The article showcases the multiple people and multiple disciplines involved in developing and implementing a workplace health promotion program like BeUpstanding, including content experts, design thinking and interaction design, business and product development, software development, implementation science. The article also describes the multiple ways in which data were collected to inform the iterative adaptions, including through deep dive interviews, surveys, toolkit analytics, and ad hoc communication and feedback. The BeUpstanding Journey Map was developed to help users understand what was involved in the BeUpstanding program.  As we wrap up the national implementation trial, we are busily applying the user centred design approach to build the next iteration of BeUpstanding. This approach ensures that the program meets…

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