/KL.7. Making office workers healthier: A public health intervention making office workers use their height-adjustable office desks more, conducted for LINAK® 2017 Making office workers healthier: A public health intervention making office workers use their height-adjustable office desks more, conducted for LINAK® Author: /KL.7, a European behavioral design agency, Copenhagen, Denmark. www.kl7.dk Abstract Background: Sitting down several hours a day is bad for our health. Studies have shown that providing office workers with a height-adjustable office desk can decrease hours of sitting at work. However, even though provided with a height-adjustable office desk, not all office workers use it. As the systematic mapping of human behavior through empirical research throughout the last 40 years have shown by the likes of Kahnemann, Twersky, Akerloff and Shiller, in behavioral economy, humans are not necessarily build for following through on most intensions. This has been named the action/ intention gap, and it may very likely be one of the root-causes of office workers with height-adjustable office desks are not using them as much as the initially wanted to. Objectives: LINAK A/S wanted to design and test solutions that could help office workers use their desks more. Especially office workers that didn’t use or used their height-adjustable desk 20 % or less of the time (defined as light users). Method: Two different reminder-interventions were tested in 3 different workplaces. Data was collected through a software measuring if the desk was in a standing or sitting position, and whether the person was at their desk. Baseline as well as the intervention data was collected in periods of 2-3 weeks. Results: For light users, we see an increase in time standing from 36.3 min/day in baseline to 78.9 min/day during the intervention. Also, equivalent to standing 7.6 % during an 8-hour workday at baseline and 16.4 % a day during the intervention period. Only looking at office workers not using their height-adjustable desk during baseline (< 2 % of the time) we found an additional effect of 12.3 min/day. No statistically significant results were found for heavy users (standing more than 20 % of the time), and no difference in effect was found of the two interventions tested. Conclusion: LINAK A/S wanted to test reminders that would increase the odds of office workers using their height-adjustable office desks. Both interventions tested in the current pilot study showed promising effect on increasing standing time for office workers using their desk 20 % or less of the time to begin with. h/day Recommendations for office workers that are mainly desk based are at least 2 hours/ day. (p. 6) 2 2x Reminders doubled the standing time of light users. The time increased from 36.6 min/day to 78.9 min/day.
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