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Educate to Elevate: The Theory Behind BeUpstanding Weeks 2 and 5

BeUpstanding Stories

Feeling foggy? You’re not alone. When we sit for too long, our blood flow and metabolism slow down. This means less oxygen is supplied to our brain and we can feel fatigued and sluggish. So why not jump up and start feeling more focused and less tired? That’s exactly what the BeUpstanding intervention is all about, especially during weeks 2 and 5, where the focus is on education and empowerment. These crucial weeks centre around the risks of prolonged sitting and the benefits of standing and moving more. But this isn’t just about throwing facts at you—it’s about strategically targeting the barriers and facilitators of behaviour change, as recommended by the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW). Let’s break down how this messaging works through the lens of the Capacity, Opportunity. Motivation (COM-B) model and the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). These frameworks have been explored in more detail on our previous blog post. Capability Understanding the risks associated with sitting too much and the benefits of being more active is one of the biggest barriers for people to sit less and stand more. Weeks 2 and 5 of the BeUpstanding intervention address this by enhancing psychological capability, with a focus on the…

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How Does BeUpstanding Help Workers with their Lower Back Pain?

BeUpstanding Stories

Do you often find your back aching after a long day at work? If so, you’re not alone. Desk workers spend hours sitting every day at work, which makes back pain a common and often overlooked issue. What may start out as mild discomfort in the lower back can quickly worsen if not addressed, potentially impacting your work performance and overall well-being. In this article, we’ll explore how the BeUpstanding program can help prevent and alleviate discomfort in the lower back, whilst simultaneously providing a range of more general benefits, allowing you to stay healthier and feel more comfortable at work. The Costs of Back Pain Back pain is a common and costly problem for Australians. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), approximately 4 million (16%), or 1 in 6 Australians live with chronic back problems. Back pain alone costs the Australian healthcare system $4.8 billion annually and is the number 1 reason for lost work productivity and early retirement in the workforce. Back pain not only poses a great economic burden, but a major health burden as well. For example, it can lead to the need for health treatments such as physiotherapy. It can also…

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How to move more at work without getting side-eyed

Latest evidence

Compared to our hunter gatherer ancestors, the modern humans have become quite sedentary. Sedentary behaviour, defined as any activity done sitting, lying or reclining with low energy expenditure, occurs across the day and across multiple settings, including the workplace. However, this increase in prolonged, uninterrupted sedentary behaviour can have multiple detrimental impacts in both the short and long term, with high levels of sedentary time associated with cardiometabolic disease, earlier deaths due to any cause, cancer, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and more! Given over 80% of Australian workers report sitting for at least some of their workday, effective workplace interventions that break up sedentary time are needed to protect workers against the many health risks of prolonged sedentary time. Are bodyweight resistance exercise breaks the solution? One possible intervention is the use of resistance exercise. Laboratory studies have shown that resistance exercises that can be done at the desk, like calf raises and half squats, can be beneficial for glucose control. Rogers and colleagues took this concept into the workplace in their recent study that investigated the acceptability and feasibility of bodyweight resistance exercise breaks in the work place to reduce sedentary behaviour. The effects of these breaks on perceived sleepiness,…

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Interventions to reduce occupational sedentary time – review evidence

Latest evidence

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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Maximise your health: programs to help get you started

Key resources

Did you know, in addition to BeUpstanding, there are a number of other health promotion programs that are freely available? Here are 9 health promotion programs that you can implement at your workplace, and 10 programs you can take part in individually. Workplace Health Programs BeUpstanding If you are a reader of this blog, hopefully you are very familiar with the BeUpstanding program – which supports desk-based workers to sit less and move more. As a BeUpstanding champion, you are provided everything you need through the online toolkit to take up, deliver and evaluate the program within your team. The program is suitable for all desk-based workers, no matter where they are working, with the ultimate aim to build a dynamic culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. If you haven’t run BeUpstanding yet, or if it has been over a year since you ran it last, why not sign up now. Queensland Healthy Kids Menu Initiative Do you work in a café, restaurant, hotel or club and wish to provide healthier options for children? Consider signing up to the Queensland Healthy Kids Menu initiative. After signing up and submitting your healthy  kids menu, you will be given promotional…

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How AI can help your team to BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

OpenAI and their program ChatGPT is a gamechanger in how information is synthesised and delivered. While big issues, such as the implications of the program on the future of work are under discussion, for BeUpstanding champions, it provides a great opportunity to easily get ideas to help your team sit less and move more. We decided to put the program to the test. We asked: What are ideas for a standing meeting? The program wrote:  There are several ideas for conducting standing meetings: Hold the meeting in a standing-only area, such as a standing desk or a huddle room, to encourage participants to stay on their feet. Use a whiteboard or flipchart for brainstorming and note-taking, which allows participants to move around and engage with the material in a more active way. Incorporate movement into the meeting, such as taking a short walk outside or doing a quick stretching routine. Use standing or standing-height tables for seating, this will make it less comfortable to sit and encourage standing. Use a timer to remind participants to stand up and move around during the meeting, or to take short breaks. Make it a walking meeting, where participants walk and talk while discussing…

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

Latest evidence

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

Latest evidence

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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