Adequate physical activity is essential to stay healthy and maintain one’s physical and mental health. But for office workers, with long desk jobs, it is difficult to stay active. Now, researchers from Japan have shed light on how office workers can stay active throughout the working day. In a recently published article in the ‘International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health’, a team of researchers from the University of Tsukuba investigated how office workers at an insurance company in Tokyo deal with the challenge of staying physically active.
Their study was based on two sets of focus group interviews with office workers and managers, respectively. “The negative health effects of a sedentary lifestyle are increasingly being taken seriously as a public health issue in Japan,” said Yoshio Nakata, one of the study’s authors. “Since office workers spend more than 70 percent of their working hours sitting, they are at higher risk of developing conditions such as diabetes.”
The interviews explored how office workers understood the importance of physical activity and how they viewed the situation in relation to physical activity in the workplace. They also invited suggestions for ways to increase their physical activity levels. “Workers place importance on physical activity as a result of factors related to the individual, socio-cultural environment, physical environment and organizational culture,” commented Associate Professor Nakata. For example, factors related to the individual include their biological health and personality. Organizational factors include matters such as physical activity or company programs to promote a healthy work-life balance policy.”
Researchers looked at solutions in terms of ability, opportunity, and motivation. They found that evidence-based health education could enhance the capacity of office workers. They may be given the opportunity to engage in physical activity through changes in the physical environment, such as issuing a standing desk or setting up a shower room. Strategies to improve motivation may include incentive programs to reward employees for increasing physical activity indicators such as their daily step count.
Such programs can be effective but are often costly – low-cost options include posters promoting physical activity and encouraging messages from authorities. Since worker health is positively related to worker productivity, further investigation of the strategies identified by researchers to promote physical activity among office workers is warranted.
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