Dr Ana Goode and A/Prof Genevieve Healy – the lead investigators on BeUpstanding – featured on the latest episode of the Physical Activity Researcher podcast – a Finnish initiative. They discuss the evidence that underpins BeUpstanding, the impact of COVID-19 on the program, and some simple strategies workplaces can do right away to start sitting less and moving more. Enjoy!
Social support involves having a network of friends, family and peers that you can turn to in times of need. Psychologists and other mental health professionals often talk about the importance of having a strong social support network. Why is having social support particularly relevant during social isolation? In the time of COVID-19 pandemic, you may have felt more irritated, lonely, or more easily affected by stressful situations. These experiences may be a trigger to reach out and connect with others. While some people have taken the lockdown time as a chance to reengage with hobbies, or home or garden projects, others may be busier than ever due to the changes induced by the lockdown. Regardless of whether you are enjoying some more free time, or adding another ball or two to your day-to-day juggle, feelings of loneliness, anxiety and isolation can arise from social-distancing requirements. This is because of the distress people experience when their social relations are not the way they would like. Poor social support has been linked to depression and loneliness has been shown to increase the risk of depression, alcohol consumption, cardiovascular disease and other physical ailments. Research has also demonstrated the link between social relationships…
COVID-19 has upended business operations on a global scale and has forced many workplaces to rapidly transition to staff working remotely. However, with organisations adapting to change and staff experiencing the benefits of working from home, it may be the case that the shift towards telecommuting is here to stay. While the focus of organisations has been on ensuring the safety of their employees at this time, employee well-being is also becoming an area of greater significance. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), well-being is “the ability for individuals to address normal stresses, work productively, and realize their highest potential.” A wellness program should be designed to support the overall health and well-being of employees, while aiming to meet the specific needs of each individual employee. If you and your team are new to working from home, navigating this change on its own can be challenging. While your organisation may already have a wellness program or initiative in place, being able to adapt the program and make it relevant and engaging for staff working remotely can come with its own set of challenges. So how do you set you and your team up for success when it comes…
During the recent COVID-19 outbreak, the Australian government had implemented social isolation in an effort to flatten the curve. Many office-based employees were encouraged to work from home in order to minimize the risk of individual’s exposure to COVID-19 through face to face contact. While working from home is reasonably practicable with the current available technology, this is often associated with a shift in workplace culture. Critical to maintaining a successful workplace culture is ensuring that there is knowledge sharing among employees. What is a knowledge-sharing culture? A knowledge-sharing culture is a set of understandings that focus on disseminating existing knowledge among team members and bringing new knowledge from the external environment. It is a set of unwritten guidelines that promotes sharing knowledge, experiences, and insights that are critical for accomplishing team missions. The key elements in knowledge sharing are not only the hardware and software, but also the ability and willingness of team members to actively participate in the knowledge sharing process. Why it is important: Shared understanding is a collective way of ensuring organisation relevant knowledge, and can influence the ability of teams to cooperate and perform well. The internet enables knowledge exchange in ways such as online group…
Many of our work teams who have signed up for BeUpstanding are taking part in a national evaluation of the program. This evaluation is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) in partnership with our fantastic policy and practice partners. We have now published the protocol of this evaluation, and the free article is available online here. The key questions we are asking in the evaluation is: who is taking part in the program, how are the champions delivering the program, does the program work (and for whom does it not work), and how much does it cost. We are still recruiting for the trial and we are looking for desk teams from across Australia to sign up now. Importantly – you can run BeUpstanding even if your team is working from home, or has a mix of home and office. Indeed, BeUpstanding might be the perfect program to help your team stay connected while also supporting their health and wellbeing.
Due to the current COVID-19 situation, social distancing and self-isolation measures have been implemented across the globe. With more people confined in their homes, there is less opportunity for people to lead active lifestyles. This is particularly concerning given that physical inactivity is directly linked to the development of chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes: two of Australia’s biggest killers. Depending on where you live, your choices for how to be active may have been reduced dramatically, with the lockdowns seeing closures to gyms, public pools, and national parks. One option that does remain for leaving the house, however, is to walk the dog. The benefits of dog ownership for activity levels of their owners have long been recognised. Studies done in Japan, the UK and America have shown that dog owners have higher levels of physical function and physical activity as compared to non-dog owners. Studies have also shown that having certain pets like dogs and horses leads to a stronger association with outdoor recreational activities as compared to non-pet owners. By attending to their needs, pets also help you to sit less and move more while you are in the house as well. Regardless of…
One of the questions that we are frequently asked is about the health impacts of supporting adults to stand up, sit less and move more. Our team has just published a systematic review and meta-analysis examining this question in relation to indicators of heart and metabolic health in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The group of lead authors have written a blog article for the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network, which we have reprinted below. Sedentary behaviour interventions in real-world conditions: what are the health benefits? In recent years, interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour in various settings, including the workplace, have become quite prevalent, in recognition of the potential risks of sedentary behaviour to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Systematic reviews evaluating their success have concluded that they do reduce sedentary behaviour, to varying degrees, but so far have yet to determine the extent to which these ‘real-world’ interventions provide the health parameters such as have been reported for acute laboratory interventions. Accordingly, we conducted an extensive systematic review with meta-analyses of interventions targeting sedentary behaviour in free-living conditions for ≥7 days, alone or combined with physical activity. We specifically focused on their effectiveness for adults on biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk, particularly those related to body anthropometry, blood…
A personal story of sitting less and moving more by Connor Soles Before coming to Queensland to study in the Doctor of Medicine program I considered myself an active person. I commuted by bicycle to my then-job as a medical scribe where I followed physicians into consultations and composed hospital charts on a mobile workstation. The hustle and bustle of the Emergency Department meant that I would cherish the rare moments that I would roll to a stop near the physicians alcove, cleverly positioned adjacent to the insta-coffee machine, and slump into a swivel chair to polish my notes. I had never experienced what it was like to be chained to a workstation seated, unmoving, for long periods of time before beginning medical school, and I’d never had to learn how not to be. In my newly (half) furnished apartment (in Brisbane) I found that I could not escape our IKEA table turned desk, which was the only assembled piece of furniture aside from the couch. As a medical student studying now consumed and overwhelmed the majority of my waking hours, that and maintaining my relationship with my fiance who had accompanied me to Australia, left little time for my…
Get Britain Standing’s page on costs of prolonged sitting for the employer has some surprising facts. The page breaks these down into three categories absenteeism, presenteeism, and costs to engagement and wellbeing. What is presenteeism you may ask? I’m sure we’ve all felt it before. I can recall showing up to work feeling “out of it.” Even when employees are present the tolls of prolonged sitting can impact the quality and quantity of work. Absenteeism is easier to quantify. Average sized employers (250 persons) loose an estimated 4800 GBP/week due to absences with all businesses forgoing a total of 15 billion GBP annually. Of this 1/3rd (5 billion GBP) is due to low back pain, an ailment directly related to sedentary behaviour. The financial boon of wellness programs in part accounts for their eager adoption overseas and here in Australia. Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Britain estimates that wellness programs can reduce absences by as much as 42%. Reorienting the workplace to support dynamic movement with sit-stand desks, walking meetings, and active breaks may seem daunting to employers but resources like Get Britain Standing and Australia’s own BeUpstanding have the tools to get your workplace started. This article was written…
The 40-hour work week, a staple of modern office employment, is seldom questioned. In an article for the Canadian publication The Globe and Mail, author Cynthia McQueen asks us, in the age of the videoconferencing and interconnectedness though the internet of things why do we commute at all? The cost of a rigid 9-5 day is measured financially. The author cites a University of Guelph study that found a personal financial boon of between 8,800-23900 $CAD/year saved by eschewing the daily commute. Commuting, as the author points out also costs us time. While BeUpstanding Champions focus on harnessing the increased productivity of movement in the office, the time commuting by car to our places of work remains intractably sedentary. Should the saved commuting time of a flexible workplace be put towards movement the author points out, research shows a potential reduction in sick days by a stunning 27%. The Conference Board of Canada estimated that in 2012 alone workplace absences cost 16.6 billion CAD. In light of the mounting evidence it is no wonder that the majority of Canadian workplaces now offer some form of flexible work contract. With the mounting burden of evidence available to employers it isn’t hard…
