Sitting at work all the time could have a serious impact on your health. Photo: Jon Boyes
Last month Australia’s best and brightest human resources and workplace health professionals came together at the inaugural Workplace Wellness Conference to discuss ways they can encourage employees to become more physically active. While it may sound counter cultural to be encouraging desk-bound employees to get physical, some of our largest companies are aware of the very real risk if they don’t act.
Australia is facing a poor health pandemic; with 70 per cent of Australians deemed to be sedentary or insufficiently active. The upshot of this new normal lifestyle is that Australians’ health is suffering greatly. Poor posture, workplace injury and obesity is commonplace; obesity is so common that it is now affecting 63 per cent of Australians.
Corporate Australia’s attention is for good reason. Immobile work practices are not only affecting employees’ health, but also their productivity and thus company profitability. It won’t be long before shareholders take note either.
Illustration: Cathy Wilcox
The research has been five years in the making, after Medibank Private released a special report focused on the increasingly sedentary lifestyles of working Australians. Entitled Stand Up Australia, the study showed that the majority of time spent at work is sedentary – with 77 per cent of the average Australian’s time spent at a desk. With an increasing amount of reliance on computers and mobile devices in our predominantly services-based economy, this number appears to be only growing.
Dale Tanner, a workplace-related injuries and musculoskeletal disorders specialist of 20 years and chairman of the Workplace Wellness Conference puts it bluntly. “Sitting is the new smoking,” he says.
“Seventy per cent of Australians are deemed to be sedentary or insufficiently active. That’s 16.8 million people. Of those, around 3.9 million will develop breast and colon cancers, 4.5 million will develop type 2 diabetes and over 5 million will suffer coronary heart disease. These illnesses will develop purely as a consequence of inadequate levels of physical activity … and corporate Australia is trying to do something about it.”
Across the two days of the conference, representatives from Optus, Woolworths, Lendlease, Workcover, TransGrid, AON and The Australian Ballet discussed the need for proper awareness raising and education and the need to work collectively to achieve behavioural change at an industry and employee level.
Some organisations have made a good start, offering such things as free heart checks, gym memberships, healthy cooking classes and other health and well-being solutions. But as Dale points out, this is only scratching the surface of initiating true change in an organisational setting and, more importantly, as some companies have already learned, a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work.
“Conference participants that have been trialling workplace well-being programs all agreed that to be successful they must provide a range of options to coerce the majority of employees on board. Some people like the gym, while others want to play a team sport or do yoga in a conference room two lunchtimes a week.
“We know that the broader the program, the greater success it will have with employees. Engagement in any physical activity is what is most important; the nature of the activity is actually, entirely secondary.”
Mental health initiatives including meditation and mindfulness training are also increasing in popularity as companies recognise the importance of maintaining mental fitness along with physical fitness – improving the mental agility of their workforces at the same time.
There was also unanimous agreement that management within organisations must lead by example.
“We know that really successful workplace wellness programs have all levels of management on board, signed up and participating. ” Tanner, a director of Workplace Posture Solutions, says.
So what can be done if your company doesn’t have a program in place? Every little piece of activity helps, suggests Tanner. Taking sneakers to work to walk at lunchtime, walking to a colleague’s desk rather than calling them, and taking the stairs rather than the lift all get the body and blood moving and don’t cost a cent.
Claire Linton-Evans is a senior executive and author of Climbing the Ladder in Heels – How to Succeed in the Career Game of Snakes and Ladders. Visit climbingtheladder.com.au.