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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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Champion Insights – How BeUpstanding has Impacted Workplace Culture

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program was developed to support work teams to address the emergent work health and safety issue of excessive sitting.  Through taking part in the program, it is hoped that the various strategies teams implement to sit less and move more in the workplace lead to sustainable changes in their organisation and create a culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. In order to evaluate the impact of BeUpstanding, champions taking part in the national trial of BeUpstanding complete a survey through the online toolkit at three timepoints in the trial – prior to launching the program, upon completion of the 8-week program, and 12 months after launching the program. Champions also take part in a phone call with a member of the BeUpstanding team at these same time points and are asked a series of questions about their experience. During their 12-month sustainability phone call with a BeUpstanding team member, champions were asked the following question about their workplace; “To what extent do you feel the workplace culture and norms have changed to support sitting less and moving more?” Here are some of their responses: “We include the BeUpstanding program as part of our induction…

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Champion Insights – Maintaining Strategies to Sit Less and Move More

BeUpstanding Stories

One of the core goals of BeUpstanding is to assist workplaces to create a culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. This means not only looking at individual changes that desk-based workers can make but also helping workplaces to make sustainable changes to the work environment, policy and culture. In order to find out how workplace champions and their teams have gone with maintaining the original strategies they chose during the program to sit less and move more, champions that are taking part in the BeUpstanding trial are asked to complete a maintenance workplace audit 12 months after commencing the BeUpstanding program.  At this time they are also contacted by the BeUpstanding team via phone to discuss how their team and workplace have gone with maintaining their strategies. This article looks at some of the feedback from champions who have completed this 12-month phone call and maintenance workplace audit questionnaire and describes the types of strategies champions reported to have been successfully maintained in their workplaces. It also explores some of the supporting factors to maintaining changes to move more in the workplace and some of the common challenges champions experienced. To date, we have had 36…

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Surprising Data on the Cost of Sitting in the UK

The Evidence

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…

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Get the Commonwealth Standing

News and Events

I was perusing the British movement blog Get Britain Standing when I came across their solutions page. Get Britain Standing is a resource for employers much like Australia’s BeUpstanding, which focuses on a healthier Britain by reducing the prolonged hours of sitting that accompany many jobs. Their upcoming nationwide event On Your Feet Britain is set for April 24th 2020 with a reported ~2 million office workers participating. Get Britain Standing accounts that Briton’s working hours contribute ~70% of the daily sedentary health burden. Dr. Stuart Biddle, a professor of Active Living and Public Health is quoted on their website acknowledging the growing body of evidence that to be healthy we must move dynamically throughout the day. Which leads me to what excited me about their Solutions page: the balance board section! The benefit being, as long as you don’t fall off, strengthening your balance and your core muscles at your standing desk. They come in a variety of styles from the simple sea-saw, the log roll, and even the expert level half dome or as I like to call it the danger dome! (see image) Maybe don’t tell HR about the nickname when you bring one to the office.…

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How to be a Safety Champion

Bite size facts

This month is Safe Work Month and the theme is Be a Safety Champion. Comcare hosted a series of regional events to mark Safe Work Month, with BeUpstanding featuring as an exemplar of a program that uses a train-the-champion model. You can download and view the presentations from here. One of the key things to help you be a safety champion is good work design. It is important to consider health and safety issues when designing work as this can help to eliminate hazards and manage risks. Effective design of good work considers: the work work systems the physical working environment the workers. Taking into account these things can help improve performance, job satisfaction and productivity. Take a look the Handbook – Principles of Good Work Design* to learn about the ten principles to good work design. Hierarchy of control The hierarchy of control can help identify ways to eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety. The most effective control is to eliminate the risk. However, if that is not possible, working through the hierarchy helps to find the most effective measure. For sitting less and moving more at work, substitution and redesign strategies could include provide high table options in meeting rooms…

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How Can Using a Standing Desk Affect Your Productivity

Bite size facts

This article is re-posted from a Sedentary Behaviour Research Network blog post on 3rd July 2019. Recently, research into the topic of excessive sitting, or “sedentary behaviour”, has been making headlines. The risk for chronic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, that comes with high levels of sitting is becoming more evident (1). Office workers represent a population that spend a significant amount of time in sedentary pursuits as a consequence of their occupation (2). As more research is being published on the topic, many workplaces are seeking non-sedentary alternatives and solutions to the traditional office environment to keep their employees as healthy and productive as possible. One such solution has been the implementation of activity-permissive workstations. Activity-permissive, or alternative, workstations replace a worker’s traditional desk and are broadly categorized into either standing desks or dynamic workstations. Standing desks allow for a worker to stand while performing a task (e.g., typing, clerical work), and can be installed as additions to an existing workstation, or as height-adjustable replacement units (see Figure 1). Dynamic workstations are designed to allow for activity or movement while working, and include a variety of alternative workstations, such as: treadmill desks, cycling desks, and dynamic sitting desks…

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Standing Up To Sedentary Working

Latest evidence

The following article was written by Sophie O’Connell and published in Occupational Health and Wellbeing on the 7th June 2019. The modern world and the constant pursuit of technological growth have almost eliminated the need for movement in our daily lives. While commuting we sit in our cars or on the bus; at work we sit at our computers or in meetings; during our leisure time we sit watching TV, playing computer games or socialising with friends. Because of technology advancements we do not even need to leave the comfort of our own homes to socialise, stay in touch with friends and family, to shop, to work or even be entertained on a screen. This means that, on average, Brits spend around 9.5 hours a day spent sitting. Typically, the amount of time spent sedentary each day increases with age. In working-age adults much of this sitting is done at work. Evidence shows that office-based workers spend around 75% of their working day sitting, with a third of sitting time being done for a prolonged period. Many of us are guilty of spending time sitting for extended periods due to work, travel or various social commitments. But with the growing…

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Office Design Impacts Employee Wellbeing

The Evidence

Research shows that in order to create sustainable behaviour change in desk based workers it is important to target individual behaviour, the physical environment, and organisational components. An article in The Conversation by Libby Sander recently highlighted impact of office design on employee wellbeing. Creating an environment which encourages employees to make healthy lifestyle choices can help instigate sustainable behaviour change. Although it may not be feasible for all businesses to invest in massive office redesigns or luxury items such as sleep pods or stairway relocation, the good news is that there are simple and cost effective changes that most businesses can make. These include centralising frequently used office materials, such as printers, recycling, rubbish bins, and mail collection. This small change in location will create more movement in workers’ days by default. Company-wide investment in sit-stand desks may not be feasible for some companies. If there are some resources available, prioritisation should go to those in highest need (i.e., those with less flexibility in their job tasks to be able to leave their desk). Long-term planning may help the organisation allocate a budget for non height adjustable desks to be replaced with sit-stand desks in the future. Full height-adjustable desks (i.e., the whole desk moves…

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