Active Workforce
You can encourage your employees to sit less and move more during the work day.
Employees can get active at lunch time, have standing or walking meetings and take stretch breaks throughout the day.
The facts
- Canadian adults reported spending an average of nearly 10 hours per day being sedentary, which is approximately 70% of their waking hours.
- In Ontario, 45% of full-time workers are employed in office settings where sitting is the primary activity.
Case study
Region of Peel creates active buildings for employee health.
Design enhancements, like making a space more user-friendly and appealing, can have a significant positive impact on employee health.
Create your plan
The following action plans can help you create an active workforce plan for your organization.
Other information
Get started
Get buy-in from senior management, front-line staff and other parties before making changes to your workplace culture or environment.
Next steps
- Ensure managers are sharing information about the initiative with their staff.
- Remember, employee engagement at each step will help improve success of any initiative.
- Engage existing committees, such as health and wellness.
Get started
Conduct a workplace assessment to determine opportunities to improve workplace culture or environment.
Next steps
Gather feedback from management and staff about factors that may prevent or encourage movement throughout the workday.
Get started
Determine the right options for increasing movement during the workday at your organization.
Next steps
- Engage management, frontline staff and their representatives to get a variety of opinions and preferences.
- Create an action plan for implementation. Consider resources, time constraints, objectives and the overall goal.
Get started
Implement the action plan.
Next steps
- It's important to show leadership support of the changes to the environment and culture.
- Combine employee education with environmental and workplace culture supports. For example: through raising awareness, improving education, and building capacity, and policy.
Get started
Evaluate the changes to identify successes and opportunities to further improve activity during the workday.
Next steps
- Be open to making changes.
- Revisit the goals and objectives that your organization developed initially and determine whether they have been met.
