revise
Mr.Q
revise.docxResearch Report
The way to encourage people stay fit and health at workplace.
Name : JING TONG
Student number : 3467964
Class : E7Z1
Due Date : 30th November 2014
Teachers’ name : Joel Echberg & Vicki Dritsas
Word counts : 1050
Abstract:
To some extent, unhealthy working habits and shortage of exercises might cause office staff get occupational disease. There are three mainly points of finding and explain ways that people stay health in workplace. The part of recommendations will give some suggestions that office work can be more healthier. All in all, the aim of this paper is provides some feasible solutions for encourage people to balance healthy condition during the work time.
1.0 Introduction:
Alibaba is the most famous Internet Business Company in China, it has been established a subsidiary in Sydney Australia. Recently, people noticed that there are some potential health risks in this company, such as: sedentary behavior(figure 1,Yates, 2011), irregular diet and work stress. On basic of that, this paper will research ways to appeal employees become healthier and fitness at work.
Figure 1:
As the graph shows below, there are 14 hours one day that sedentary workers spend for sitting and 2 hours to do non-exercise standing activities. To compare with active worker, office workers have more sedentary time while less heat consumption. Which reflects that people in office environment need more physical activities and healthy working habits.
Source: Thomas Yates, August 2011, Stand up for your health: Is it time to rethink the physical activity paradigm, Pages 292–294.
2.0 Findings
2.1 Reduce occupational sitting time.
Take a stand project to encourage office workers reduce their sitting time. Due to the sedentary behaviour might cause occupational or cardiovascular diseases, such as: neck pain, hypertension, coronary heart diseases and so on. Employees in some companies are required to use the sit-stand devices, which is a new type of office desk for sending e-mail or ringing up, when people use it have to without chairs, only by standing . The purpose of this device is try to make people change more postures during the working time, it may can avoids sedentary behaviour. Thus, it is a good way that people use some facilities to reduce their sitting time and help them to decrease the potential health risk. ‘Break in prolonged sitting time have been correlated with beneficial metabolic profiles among, suggesting that frequent breaks in sedentary activity may explain lower health risk’ (Abigail S. Katz, 2011).
2.2 Promote eating habit at workplace.
Most office workers have poorly nutrition intake or irregular eating habit during their work time. Companies have to provide catering services for their employees, and make the office a better environment to have food. There is a long history of catering service in Finland, they have been developed this service for employee since 1940s. In this progress, people built up a good eating habit and nutrition intake day by day. Nowadays, office workers in Finland are always have a better health condition than other countries, which is result from the catering service. (Susanna Raulio 2010)‘It should be possible for every employee to eat properly during the working day’ Companies offer some fruits, and healthy food rather than junk food which is staff always have. And to set up a section which provides catering service and kitchen area then people can prepare or store food by themselves.
2.3 Work stress and self-adjusted.
Figure 2:
Tends in the percentage of employees reporting they are under excessive pressure several days of the week and have too high a workload: spring 2009 to spring 2010.
Source: Tarani Chandola, 2010, British Academy, Stress at work, P 37
As figure 2 shows, approximately 36% to 44% employees had reported that they were working under excessive pressure during the period of 2009 to 2010. That implies the occupational stress also should be considered for employee’s health. There are two ways which can help people keeping good health conditions under excessive work stress. According to Roohangiz Karimi & Farhad Alipour (2011) ‘Increasing employees’ sense of control through programs such as job development and enrichment, decision making, and delegation of authority in order to increase the employees’ sense of control over their jobs and the work environment’. So, employees could reduce occupational stress through realize the value of advance, and make some decisions of work development. In addition, physical exercise is a good way to make people feel relax and reduce hypertension. During the period of exercise, it also can improve the immunity and prevents illness, speed up metabolism.
Conclusion:
Unhealthy working habit seems to be a serious health risk at office environment. While it is clear that employees could avoid these issues through reduce their sitting time, changing their eating habit and self-adjusted of work stress. However, health condition at workplace should taken by both individual and company.
Recommendations:
Alibaba Inc have to make physical activity more convenient for employees. For example: set up a free gym for staff, which should be involves some fundamental facilities. Such as: running machine and bikes. In addition, the company can installs bicycle parking to replace half proportions of car parking, which could encourage people walking or biking for work.
The company also have to provides an ergonomically-chair for employees, make sure their sitting arrangement is ergonomic while they sit in front of computer for a long time. A good form can reduce the risk to catching some occupational diseases, such as: neck pain , back pain.
Alibaba should provides a kitchen area that gives employees an appealing place to store and prepare healthy food while working. They can prepare food by themselves, which is much healthier than fast food. Furthermore, Alibaba have to make the break time to be longer and regularization . Then, make sure people get more than one and half hours for eat and rest. Which is healthy for their digestive system.
Directors of the company could organize some collective activities to help staff reduce their work stress, such as: picnic, sports competition. They also have to enhance employees’ interesting of these activities. They can establish competitive groups so people can track their progress together, or set up prizes involve little gifts for group or individual who done very well. Outdoor activities are not only make office workers relax and happy, but also is a good way to encourage them to do more physical exercises.
Reference list:
Thomas Yates, Emma G. Wilmot 2011, Stand up for your health: Is it time to rethink the physical activity paradigm, Science Direct, Viewed 25 November 2014,
< http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168822711001422 >
Nicolaas P. Pronk, Abigail S. Katz 2012, Reducing Occupational Sitting Time and Improving Worker Health: The Take-a-Stand Project, The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science, viewed 28 November 2014,
< http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477898/ >
Roohangiz Karimi, Farhad Alipour 2011, Reduce Job stress in Organizations : Role of Locus of Control, International Journal of Business and Social Science, viewed 28 November 2014,
< http://www.ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_18_October_2011/28.pdf >
Susanna Raulio, Eva Roos, Ritva Prattala 2009, School and workplace meals promote healthy food habit, Public health Nutrition, viewed 30 November 2014,
