Many employers are filled with "dread" at the thought of tackling the widespread problem of unhealthy sedentary behaviour among workers, but solutions can be simple and inexpensive, according to a physiotherapist.
At an HR and wellbeing forum held by ABC Commercial in Sydney last week, physiotherapist Anna-Louise Bouvier, creator of the Happy Body at Work initiative, said her pre-program surveys of 15,000 employees didn't paint a pretty picture of workplace health in corporate Australia.
Three in five employees sat for more than 11 hours a day, 72 per cent ate lunch at their desks and 36 per cent did no regular exercise, she said.
One in five felt overwhelmed "at times", and nearly one in two (45%) slept fewer than seven hours a night, with 47 per cent of those people reporting they woke up at night thinking about work.
Some 45 per cent reported feeling tired "most of the time", and stress-related health complaints were widespread.
"This is consistent across every organisation we speak to," Bouvier said.
She added that studies had demonstrated beyond doubt the adverse health effects of a sedentary lifestyle, but getting senior managers interested in employee wellbeing remained a challenge.
Many companies were "still stuck so much in this 'risk and reward' place", she said.
"People won't commit funds to change. That is the nature of corporate Australia. The thought of actually putting in sit-to-stand desks for thousands of people fills people with utter dread."
Bouvier said employers should stop taking a negative, risk-based approach to employee wellbeing, and reframe the issue as creating "a culture of care" in the workplace.
"Stop telling people that sitting is the new smoking... They know that," she said.
She said research showed that the number-one driver of employee engagement was whether the employee felt the organisation sincerely cared about their wellbeing.
Some 86 per cent of employees she surveyed believed their organisations showed they cared about the challenges they faced in their work and home life by adopting a wellbeing program, Bouvier said.
Fifty-two per cent felt they were coping better with their workload and stress, 45 per cent were coping better with the mental demands of their job and 64 per cent were feeling brighter and more energised at home, she said.
Bouvier stressed that employee wellbeing initiatives could start with something small, such as encouraging employees not to eat lunch at their desks, introducing a pedometer challenge, or having walking meetings, which had added productivity benefits for one of the organisations she worked with.
This company worked out that it took 12 minutes to walk around the block, and decided that a walking meeting's final decisions had to be made before attendees reached the work building, she said.
"They said they cannot believe the difference in productivity since they got people out walking."
