Get up, stand up: evidence on sedentary working shows employees need to get moving
Get up, stand up: evidence on sedentary working shows employees need to get moving
source Munster Bootcamp
edited by kcontents
By Noel O'Reilly on 1 Apr 2016 in Occupational Health, OH employment law, Research, Wellbeing
Friday 29 April is On your feet Britain day, which aims to raise awareness of the ill-effects of sedentary working. Noel O’Reilly reports on a recent conference that looked at evidence on the health risks of prolonged sitting at work and what employers should do about it.
“Prolonged sitting is the most underrated health threat of modern time.” So says David Dunstan, head of Physical Activity Laboratory at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. Employers should take note, that office workers sit on average 10 hours each day, and 70% of the total time we spend sitting is at work.
Scientific evidence is growing fast on the ill-effects of sedentary working, with a big increase in studies in the last five years and many more in progress. So what should employers be doing about the problem?
In January, experts from around the world gathered to present the evidence for good practice at the Active Working CIC conference in London, “The sedentary office – building the evidence to justify change,” organised by Get Britain Standing.
At the event Active Working, which also organises “On your feet Britain”, got across the message that we should all move around more by making delegates wear different coloured lanyards and asking them to take turns standing up for the talks when their colour was announced.
Gavin Bradley, founding director of Active Working, told delegates that the campaign focuses on: building evidence; education; equipment; making the business case; changing behaviour and culture; and public health policy. The message is that sitting is a learnt behaviour, and employers are advised to recruit a workplace champion to point out “the elephant in the room”.
In 2015, a milestone was reached with the publication of a “consensus statement” by a group of expert academics commissioned by Public Health England (Buckley et al, 2015). This included new recommendations for employers to reduce prolonged periods of sedentary work:
Accumulate two hours of standing and/or light activity daily during working hours, eventually progressing to four.
Break up seated work with standing work, regularly.
Avoid prolonged static sitting (and standing).
Employers should promote reduction of prolonged sitting alongside other health promotion goals.
There are signs that the Government has realised the importance of the workplace to public health. Last year, a Health at Work Innovation Fund with a £40 million budget was announced, to pilot new and best ways to get people back to work. As well as tackling the disability employment gap, the initiative aims to improve productivity.
The Sedentary Office
The Active Working CIC conference “The Sedentary Office – Building the evidence to justify change” was organised by Get Britain Standing and took place in January 2016.
Also in 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a physical activity strategy for the European region that recommended workplace adjustments: “The measures could include action to address the workplace layout, such as the provision of adjustable desks, prominent and promotional signs on staircases encouraging their use, regular breaks during the day to allow for physical activity and membership of a gym or sports club.” (WHO, 2015).
Health risks
Dr James Levine, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, told delegates that studies showed the role of non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) in our wellbeing. NEAT is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sportslike exercise. It varies 2,000 kcal a day because of work and play and is a significant hazard ratio in 34 medical conditions, including metabolic (diabetes, cardiovascular, hypertension), mechanical (arthritis, back pain), malignancy (breast cancer), and mental health (depression, impact on creativity) (Thyfault et al, 2015).
Variation in metabolic rate at work depending on activity, per day
| Occupation type | NEAT kcal a day |
| Chair-bound | 300 |
| Seated work, no option of moving | 700 |
| Seated work, discretion & requirement to move | 1,000 |
| Standing work, eg homemaker, shop assistant | 1,400 |
| Strenuous work, eg agriculture | 2,300 |
| (Data assuming basic metabolic rate: 1600 kcal a day) Source: Black, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 50, no. 72 | |
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