Encouraging Office Workers to ‘Stand Up, Sit Less, and Move More’: Evaluation of Organisational-level Support and Activity Tracker Strategies

Abstract

Background: Desk-based office workers, who form the largest individual occupational sector, spend an average of three quarters of their working day sitting, primarily in prolonged, unbroken bouts, and with little time spent in standing and stepping activities. This distribution of activity and inactivity has known detrimental effects on health. As such, the office workplace is a key setting for sitting-reduction and activity-promoting interventions that could be delivered through workplaceled health and wellbeing programs.Organisational-level strategies are an essential element for the successful implementation of workplace health interventions. However, the impact of organisational-level strategies (e.g., management support) on individual-level changes in sitting, standing, and stepping is unknown.Consumer-targeted wearable activity trackers may be a useful addition to integrate with organisational-level strategies; however, to date, there has been minimal evaluation of their use within the workplace. Aim:The aim of this thesis was to evaluate, within the context of a cluster-randomised trial, the effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of organisational-level strategies with and without an activity tracker on sitting (total; prolonged ≥ 30 min) and activity (standing; stepping) outcomes in desk-based office workers. This aim was addressed through five papers, which form Chapters 2 to 6. Methods and Results:Chapter 2 (Paper 1) describes the trial methods. Desk-based office workers (n=153) from one large organisation were cluster-randomised by work team to organisational-level strategies ('Group ORG', 9 teams, 87 participants), or organisational-level strategies plus LUMOback activity tracker ('Group ORG+Tracker', 9 teams, 66 participants). Organisational-level strategies were delivered by a workplace champion and included an information booklet, five emails, and senior executive support for the study. The waist-worn LUMOback provided real-time feedback on sitting, standing, posture, and stepping, and prompts on sitting and posture. Assessments occurred at baseline, 3 and 12 months, using online questionnaires (to collect sociodemographic, health and work variables) and the thigh-worn activPAL3 monitor (to measure sitting and activity outcomes). Participants in both groups also received individually-tailored sitting and activity data (from the activPAL) at the three time points, delivered via email by the research team.