The Oregon Healthy Workforce Center has a new Total Worker Health® toolkit available. The Active Workplace toolkit is a science-based toolkit designed to help reduce sitting time at work and provide training to help managers and supervisors better support workplace safety, health and well-being for their employees. Employees will also engage in trainings and team activities to help promote a culture of safety, health and well-being. By reducing sedentary time and prolonged sitting at work, we can help reduce musculoskeletal pain, reduce lost work time due to injury or illness and overall worker well-being.
Active Workplace is an evidence-based program that measured workplace sedentary behavior and physiological markers of health. In the study, the Active Workplace team recruited 241 call center employees across four worksites in the United States to participate in the study.
Individual benefits of decreased sedentary time and increased movement:
- Improved mood and job satisfaction
- Increased engagement at work
- Decreased risk of chronic disease
- Decrease in pain
Organizational benefits of decreased sedentary behavior and increased movement:
- Higher overall productivity
- Lower illness absence
- Enhanced recruitment and retention of talent
- Improved team performance and culture of health
Dr. Brad Wipfli designed Active Workplace to address organizational concerns related to improving the safety, health and well-being of employees. Organizational-level methods focus on changing the work environment and culture through physical workplace alterations and by changing the ways that supervisors interact with employees. Individual-level strategies include increasing use of available equipment (e.g. sit stand desks and pedal stands), recurring monthly safety and health activities and changing employee health and safety behaviors.
Active Workplace toolkit components include:
- Promoting the use of active workstations (e.g. standing desk, pedal stands, etc.)
- Supervisor and manager training with behavior and inter-supervisor tracking activities
- Employee/team training and goal setting
- Supervisor led team conversations
- Team competitions
- Health and safety messaging through downloadable posters
This new toolkit can be downloaded at YourWorkpath.com, a website where the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center houses resources for workplace safety, health and well-being, such as our Total Worker Health® toolkits. Download the one-pager for more information.
Our Outreach Team is available to discuss workplace safety, health and well-being resources and provide consultation and guidance to support your organization’s Total Worker Health® programming efforts. If you are an employee, safety/wellness practitioners or organizational leader with questions or need guidance to identify which resources fit your needs, please email schucker@ohsu.edu.
