Given that most adults spend many of their waking hours at work, worksites are seen as a potentially useful place to offer opportunities for increasing physical activity. Worksites may include interventions focused on the individual, the physical built environment (e.g., walking trails, fitness facilities) and/or changes in policies to encourage physical activity (e.g., flexible work hours). Some programs and policies have been offered by management, while others have been developed jointly through labor/management negotiations. There are also interventions that have been developed to build support for physical activity both from fellow employees and family and friends.
For example, you might choose to bring a certified exercise instructor into the workplace, develop an informational pamphlet, bring in health educators to assist employees in developing personal fitness routines, build a walking trail around the worksite, construct fitness facilities or change worksite policies for flex-time. In developing your intervention, it is important to consider the feasibility of engaging in these various strategies and to consider alternatives as appropriate. For example, many small businesses find it useful, and cost effective, to work with existing community organizations and fitness facilities rather than developing their own fitness programs and facilities on site. It is also important that the opportunities created are flexible enough to meet the needs of a wide variety of employees.
These programs have been implemented in a wide variety of unionized and non-unionized workplace settings, including: manufacturing (automotive plants, textile), printing, fire department, university campuses, municipal, service and military worksites.
Worksite-based interventions are most effective when links to interventions in other settings are established in order to encourage physical activity both inside and outside of the work day:
- Community-based (e.g., build transit systems in the community that connect residential and commercial places so that people don’t have to drive and spend more time walking to and from the transit stations)
- School-based (e.g., develop flexible work leave policies that make parent participation in school activities an option for employees)
- Faith-based (e.g., allow faith-based organizations to use worksite facilities or equipment to host events that promote physical activity)
- Health care-based (e.g., institute worksite policies that provide decreased health insurance rates to employees)
- Home-based (e.g., encourage parents to serve as role models and build physical activity into family routines)
Before You Begin…
There are a number of planning steps that lead to a variety of specific intervention strategies. For assistance with these planning steps, use the navigation bar at the end of this page. Intervention MICA provides you with tools to help you:
- Create a partnership with other individuals, groups and organizations within your community.
- Learn about your readiness to plan your intervention (readiness and preparation).
- Work on your organizational or community capacity, budget, funding sources, social determinants of health, or cultural competence (capacity).
- Prepare your evaluation in order to figure out how to measure the success of your intervention.
- Maintain your momentum through information, tools and resources to assist you in sustaining your partnership and intervention over time.
Below are specific intervention strategies for worksite-based interventions. If you will be working in other settings (e.g., communities, schools, faith-based organizations, health care facilities or homes), then you will want to refer to these other settings for more information.
Intervention Strategies
Even though the intervention strategies that may be used are described separately below, each of these strategies is most effective when it is combined with other strategies. For example, changing employees’ knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about physical activity may do little to affect behavior unless the worksite has set aside time during the day for physical activity (e.g., lunch breaks or flex-time). Likewise, the worksite will need to have adequate resources (e.g., facilities, showers) and support from managers and administrators in order to encourage physical activity among employees.
As described in Readiness and Preparation, it is important to make sure that the intervention strategies are created to represent and address the needs of the Community of Interest. This may include paying attention to how different groups think about physical activity (e.g., preferences for different types of physical activity may exist for men and women or children and adults). Furthermore, an intervention works best when there is an attempt to address language, reading level, and cultural barriers (see Cultural Competence for more information).
--Increasing knowledge and skills, influencing attitudes and beliefs
Individual Information Exchange intervention strategies have been developed to increase individual knowledge and skills as well as to change attitudes and beliefs about physical activity. More specifically, these interventions may provide personally tailored information about the benefits of physical activity (e.g., better health or positive mood), the barriers to being active (e.g., lack of time or bad weather) or ways to build activities into your daily routine. These interventions are also useful in helping individuals develop skills to enhance aerobic fitness, flexibility and/or strength. For example, health risk assessments can provide valuable information about employees’ and family members’ physical activity. These assessments may be done by an outside vendor or may be part of an occupational health intervention.
Mass Media Campaigns use pamphlets, newsletters, posters and/or other media to raise awareness, provide information or change attitudes about the importance of physical activity.
Group Education Sessions intervention strategies make use of existing classes or create new classes within an existing curriculum to teach participants about how to increase physical activity by making lifestyle changes. Because of the interactive nature of the classroom, participants have the opportunity to learn new information, ask questions, get support from classmates and the instructor or practice new skills.
Provider Education Systems are interventions targeting health care providers (doctors, nurses, clinicians, health practitioners) to encourage them to educate their patients or clients regarding the importance of physical activity. Provider education systems include educating the providers on the importance of talking to their patients or clients, reminding providers to talk to their patients or clients during routine visits and offering feedback to providers regarding retrospective assessments of their performance in delivering physical activity information and resources.
--Providing social support
Supportive Relationships intervention strategies within a worksite can encourage physical activity by developing social support both among employees and with the social networks of employees. These programs may include buddy systems, team contests, and/or utilization of lay health advisors to deliver program messages and activities. These intervention strategies can also increase the information worksites have about physical activity (informational support), the skills and abilities employees have to be physically active (tangible support) and the sense of acceptance and belonging among employees as they make choices to be more physically active (appraisal support).
Group Education Sessions (see description above)
--Changing public policies and the community environment
Environment and Policy Initiatives include a variety of intervention strategies such as point-of-decision-prompts (i.e., signs that serve as cues to action to encourage physical activity), changes to the built environment (e.g., redesigning communities to place residential and commercial land uses in close proximity, maintaining sidewalks, putting in traffic lights or street lights, and enhancing access to public transit systems) and enhanced access, including:
- creating changes in the physical environment (e.g., development or enhancement of exercise facilities or walking trails at the worksite); and
- developing policy changes to enhance the ability of employees to take part in physical activity.
It is important to remember that not all employees have equal resources or supports for being physically active. As a result, worksites that are truly interested in enhancing physical activity of their employees may need to provide a wide range of programs and policies. For example, it may be useful to provide flexible work schedules to allow for physical activity, to offer compensation for joining fitness facilities or to provide a set amount of money for each employee to purchase exercise clothing or equipment. Some employees may need childcare or adult care to enable them to be physically active and worksites might be able to assist in providing a variety of options to assist in obtaining this care. Alternately, the worksite may need to work with community facilities to ensure that the facilities are open and available at the time the employees may want to make use of them. Similarly, because worksites are part of a larger community, a worksite interested in enhancing physical activity may choose to work with broader community initiatives such as building walking trails, enhancing public transportation, decreasing rates of crime, or developing more physical activity friendly communities as means of enhancing the ability of their employees to be physically active.