Fitness: the challenge of being more active at work

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For many of us, the eight or so hours spent at the office are the least active part of the day. With only a small number of companies offering gyms or on-site fitness programs and the majority of employees working in front of a screen, it’s no surprise that the typical office worker spends about 82% of their time sitting from 9am to 5pm.

The dangers of spending too much time in a chair have been widely publicized. Chronic sitters have an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, unhealthy body weight, and mortality. They are also less likely to get a good night’s sleep and more likely to report higher levels of life dissatisfaction. Neither of these results is consistent with a healthy and productive workforce.

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Workplace wellness programs often address the difficulties employees face in being active at work, but changing corporate culture isn’t easy. Promotional campaigns to use stairs, take active breaks and stop long periods of sitting are a good start, but rarely result in significant changes in sedentary behavior at the office. What proved to get employees moving were company-wide fitness challenges.

A typical corporate fitness challenge brings together colleagues to achieve a specific goal, such as accumulating the most steps or minutes of activity. Challenges last four to eight weeks and use digital tools like apps to collect fitness data. At the end of the challenge, the team that accumulates the most active minutes wins.

ParticipACTION, a non-profit organization dedicated to getting Canadians moving, hosts several fitness challenges a year, some within organizations and others open to the general public.

“We’ve been doing this for years,” said Rebecca Jones, senior director of marketing and communications at ParticipACTION. One of the most popular options is the Sneak It In program, which encourages employees to accumulate small, frequent sessions of physical activity throughout the day. Using an app to track steps and/or eligible activities, teams and individuals compete to collect the most active minutes. Competition between teams is friendly, with the aim of increasing engagement as well as uptime.

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Jones says buy-in from senior management is critical to a successful challenge. Making it easier for employees to be active in the workplace is a top-down initiative. Adding lunchtime yoga classes, promoting active commuting, offering discounts for community bike share programs or local gyms, and encouraging walking meetings, desk workouts, and stair climbing initiatives are just a few of the most popular programs.

Steven Grover, professor of medicine at McGill University and founder of the McGill Health Improvement Program, has helped facilitate fitness challenges at universities, federal agencies, the military and in hospitals. It begins each challenge with individuals filling out a survey to assess their current health status and physical activity level and create a baseline for comparison when the challenge is over. But he emphasizes that there are more positives to a fitness challenge than just racking up exercise minutes.

“The mental health benefits are substantial,” he said.

Part of the mental health boost is the result of an increased daily dose of physical activity. Exercise is a proven mood improver. But it also relates to the opportunity for coworkers to engage in something other than work. Most fitness challenges encourage participants to communicate with their teammates through an online message board that offers words of encouragement, virtual high-fives, and group activity planning, all in the pursuit of meeting goals. of the team.

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“Even sharing simple sentiments, like telling everyone to have a great day, seems to be important to many people,” Grover said.

Grover and Jones said that almost all fitness challenges get more people moving more often. But whether participants notice any health benefits or maintain their active lifestyle after the challenge ends is an ongoing question.

Grover regularly monitors the statistics of the fitness challenges he facilitates, including publishing two studies on a program implemented by pharmaceutical giant Merck Canada. The studies reported on the health and exercise habits of Merk employees one and two years after the initial fitness challenge, which included health screenings and a web-based platform to enter and collect data including active minutes, sleep habits and feedback on stress, fatigue and depression.

Grover and his research team reported improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol, weekly physical activity, perceived stress, sleep, fatigue, blood sugar, and cardiovascular health from the first fitness challenge that were maintained or improved by employees who participated in a subsequent challenge.

Also worth noting is that employees with at least one cardiovascular risk factor saw the most significant health benefits, adding 100 minutes to their weekly exercise count and improving most other markers of good health. Not to be outdone, those who took on the challenge as the least fit increased their physical activity level fivefold and reported significant improvements in sleep and stress.

“Workplace wellness programs focused primarily on evolving team challenges can support long-term employee engagement, engagement in healthy lifestyle habits, and sustained clinical improvements,” Grover and his team reported.

With these types of results, corporate fitness challenges are a good return on investment.

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