Changing office culture is essential to cure ‘killer’ office lifestyles
Businesses must avoid email and increase autonomy, say experts, as report labels sedentary working ‘as deadly as smoking’
Ever wondered if your literally killing your staff because of your office culture? A report from Public Health England which is published in The Lancet states that companies need to initiate a workplace cultural revolution to get employees out of their chairs, say wellbeing experts, following a shock study that found sitting at a desk for at least eight hours a day could increase the risk of premature death by up to 60 per cent.
The findings confirm that a sedentary lifestyle poses as large a threat to public health as smoking, and causes more deaths than obesity.
Participants who sat for at least eight hours a day and engaged in less than five minutes’ physical activity had mortality rates of 9.8 per cent. However, an hour of exercise a day can offset the health repercussions of sedentary work. Those who spent the same amount of time seated but managed to exercise for at least an hour saw their death rates fall to 6.2 per cent.
“Physical health is a huge problem for sedentary office workers – who make up the majority of people in the UK because we are a service and knowledge-based economy,” said Professor Sir Cary Cooper, president of the CIPD and a world-leading expert in workplace health.
To read more from the report visit the CIPD Website
