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National Safe Work Month

Key events

October is National Safe Work Month – a time for workplaces to consider how they can build a safe and healthy workplace for all Australians. This year, Safe Work Australia’s theme for Safe Work Month is ‘Be a Safety Champion’. This is meant to encourage employers and workers from all occupations and industries to become a champion for work health and safety. Everyone can support a safety culture at their workplace and promote best practice work health and safety initiatives. SafeWork Australia’s website has a great list of what’s on in your state or territory. BeUpstanding is a featured resource being promoted for National Safe Work Month! SafeWork Australia has been a long- time supporter of BeUpstanding and is one of five partners in our recent NHMRC parternship grant. This grant has given us funding for a national implementation trial of the BeUpstanding Champion Toolkit. As part of the implementation trial we are able to offer champions free coaching by our expert team and customised data feedback reports. It really is a great time to Be Upstanding!

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Being The Best Champion For Your Workplace: Understanding The Psychology of Leadership

The Evidence

As a BeUpstanding champion, you will be leading your organisation in forming healthier habits and creating a dynamic workplace culture; but it’s no secret that taking on new leadership roles like this one can be daunting, especially if you feel as though you don’t fit the bill. Recent research suggests that just having self-doubt about your successes and leadership abilities may in turn stifle them. Findings from a study on the consequences of imposter feelings and self-doubt showed that they negatively impacted students’ ability to career plan and strive, and decreased motivation to lead in a professional working environment. Previous and more traditional psychology theories of leadership might perpetuate these imposter feelings by focusing on the “innate” qualities that all great leaders have, or a prescribed reward and punishment system that all great leaders use. For example, the Great Man theory of leadership is the idea that “leaders are born and not made”, possessing inherited qualities which make them better suited to lead (i.e. confidence or assertiveness). Transactional leadership theory, on the other hand, asserts that great leadership is determined by one’s ability to set expectations and enforce them with the effective use of rewards and punishments. These theories are…

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Safe Work Month – Free Community Breakfast

Key events

This October is National Safe Work Month, an initiative of Safe Work Australia. Safe Work Month focuses on asking workers and employers across Australia to commit to building safe and healthy workplaces for all Australians. To launch Safe Work Month, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland are hosting a free breakfast on Wednesday 2 October 2019 at King George Square, Ann St, Brisbane from 7am to 9:30am. There will be free food, lucky draw prizes and giveways, cooking demonstrations and more. The BeUpstanding team will also be there to talk to you about how your workplace can sit less and move more and you can even sign up to be a BeUpstanding Champion on the day. We hope to see you there!

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BeUpstanding features in Canberra

BeUpstanding Stories

On the 1st of August, lead investigator for BeUpstanding – Associate Professor Genevieve Healy – spoke at a Commonwealth Safety Managers Forum event in Canberra to promote the BeUpstanding program and the exciting new updates that are now available. If you haven’t seen any of the updates, make sure you head over to BeUpstanding to check them out. We are currently recruiting for our national evaluation trial of the program, with participating champions provided with free health coaching from our expert BeUpstanding team.

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What Makes A Good Champion?

Tips and tools

Are you interested in becoming a workplace champion? Maybe you are looking for someone to assume this role in your workplace but you are unsure where to start. You might ask yourself what makes a ‘good’ workplace champion? Previous research suggests that the most effective workplace champions are 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). They must also be committed to making long-term positive health changes in their workplace and display a good relationship with their peers. It could be someone that has, or is eager to gain, some experience in managing similar projects. Health and safety representatives are often chosen for this position because it coincides with their goals, namely to create a safer, healthier workplace. However, we must also consider the individual’s capacity to adopt this role. Do they have the time and resources to engage fully with the program within the confines of their own job? Or will it fall into their periphery? These are just a few of the things that must be considered before electing a workplace champion. More general personality traits like outgoingness and…

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Forget Standing Desks: To Stay Healthy, You’ve Got To Move All Day

Latest evidence

The following article, written by Christopher Keyes, was published by The Guardian on February 6th, 2019. If you want to dedicate yourself to a lifetime of good habits, don’t start at the gym. Start at the office. A few years ago, James Levine, a doctor of endo­crinology at the Mayo Clinic, sparked a radical change in America’s office furniture. His research had inspired a pile of viral stories cataloging the negative effects of sitting at a desk: leg muscles shut down, blood pressure increases, good cholesterol plummets, your children starve. OK, I made up that last one, but the real takeaway was no less dire. “Excessive sitting is a lethal activity,” Levine, who has studied sedentary behavior for nearly 20 years and is the most widely quoted expert on the topic, told the New York Times in 2011. And the solution – at least the one people heard – was to start standing. Cue the office makeovers. Over the next several years, workers all across America embraced stand-up desks. At Outside’s headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, our building manager furiously reconfigured work spaces. Desks were removed from their shelving brackets, raised a foot and a half, and remounted. Walking the hallways,…

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Left to right: Jennifer Burzic, A/Prof Genevieve Healy, Dr Ana Goode

A little about the UQ BeUpstanding™ team!

BeUpstanding Stories

WayAhead Workplaces recently featured us on their website! If you want to learn a little more about the UQ BeUpstanding team, click here, or read on below. NAME The BeUpstanding™ Team A/Prof Genevieve Healy, Dr Ana Goode, Jennifer Burzic JOB TITLES Genevieve: Principal Research Fellow Ana: Research Fellow Jen: Research Assistant ORGANISATION The University of Queensland, School of Public Health, Cancer Prevention Research Centre WHAT ARE YOU/YOUR ORGANISATION CURRENTLY FOCUSSING ON IN TERMS OF WORKPLACE HEALTH AND WELLBEING? Here at The University of Queensland, we have been focussing on enhancing our BeUpstanding™ program (www.beupstanding.com.au): a free, evidence-informed online program designed to support workplace champions make sitting less and moving more the new norm in their work team. We received NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council) funding for a national implementation trial and have been working closely with our amazing partners; Comcare, Safe Work Australia, Office of Industrial Relations QLD, VicHealth and Cancer Council WA/ Healthy Workplaces WA building towards a national launch in 2019. WHAT ASPECT OF WORKPLACE HEALTH AND WELLBEING DOES YOUR ORGANISATION DO WELL IN? We are very lucky that The University of Queensland offers a lot of great health and wellbeing programs including the UQ wellness program, Bupa services…

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Discovery Interviews: What are they, why we are doing them, and what have we found?

Latest evidence

The BeUpstanding™ team have recently been out and about talking to and interviewing champions, potential champions, teams, and workplaces about their experience of taking part in BeUpstanding. Today we are going to take a look at what discovery interviews are, what they are used for, and why we are doing them. Most importantly we are going to share some of the interesting things that we found. What are discovery interviews? Discovery interviews have one main purpose – and that is for the researcher (or product development team) to understand how the end user is actually using a product. In our case, they are giving us insights into why organisations and champions are taking up BeUpstanding, or why they might consider taking it up, as well as the barriers and facilitators to success. In this round of interviews, our discovery process has involved in-depth interviews with government departments, mining, and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, as well as on-site observations of work teams, both before and after putting BeUpstanding into practice. Over the past several months we have conducted numerous interviews. We deliberately chose teams with varying levels of engagement with BeUpstanding. We interviewed teams that were actively using the…

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What is the link between Stress, Team Cohesion, and BeUpstanding™?

Latest evidence

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,…

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US Physical Activity Guidelines (2nd Edition) Now Available

The Evidence

Have you heard? The U.S. Department of Health and Human services (USDHHS) recently released the updated guidelines on physical activity. As first reported by the USDHHS, here are the “Top 10 Things to Know About the Second Edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans” (psst make sure you check out #6). The second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans provides evidence-based recommendations for adults and youth ages 3 through 17 to safely get the physical activity they need to stay healthy. There are new key guidelines for children ages 3 through 5 and updated guidelines for youth ages 6 through 17, adults, older adults, women during pregnancy and the postpartum period, adults with chronic health conditions, and adults with disabilities. The new key guidelines for children ages 3 through 5 state that preschool-aged children should be active throughout the day to enhance growth and development. Adults caring for children this age should encourage active play (light, moderate, or vigorous intensity) and aim for at least 3 hours per day. The recommended amount of physical activity for youth ages 6 through 17 is the same. Each day, youth ages 6 through 17 need at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity to attain the most…

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