Active @ the Office (BOK): A Step-by-Step-Guide

Why use the BOK Step-by-Step Guide?

It’s easy to have periods of prolonged sitting, especially during office work. To keep employees healthy and energized, it’s important for employers to create a work environment that encourages movement throughout the workday. This is not easy and cannot be achieved with a single measure. A cultural shift is needed, supported by a combination of measures. This step-by-step guide provides practical guidance on designing and implementing a comprehensive intervention tailored to your organization, helping to make movement at the office the norm.

When Can You Use the BOK Step-by-Step Guide?

Making an active work culture can be challenging. To achieve this, it’s important that everyone within the organization feels encouraged and supported to participate. Does your organization want to create a more active work culture, but you’re not sure how or where to start? Do you want to know how to convince management of the importance of movement during the workday? Or how to engage employees so that you can work together to make movement the norm?

This step-by-step guide is designed for organizations that want to create a more active work culture, regardless of how much they are already doing. Many organizations want to become more active but are unsure where to start, or start enthusiastically but find it difficult to maintain momentum. This guide provides information, practical resources, examples, and explanations to help you along the way.

Who is the BOK Step-by-Step-Guide for?

This step-by-step guide is intended for organizations where employees perform sedentary (office) work. It can be used by those responsible for working conditions and employee health and well-being, such as prevention officers, occupational health and safety coordinators, HR professionals or, in small businesses, managing directors. Occupational health and safety professionals can also use this guide.

How to use this guide?

To make an impact and change employees’ sitting and movement behaviors, it’s important to use a combination of approaches. There is no single measure that works for every organization or is effective enough on its own. This step-by-step guide helps organizations develop and implement their own interventions to reduce prolonged sitting and make movement at work the norm. First, time, budget, and support need to be secured (Step 1), followed by setting a specific goal (Step 2). Next, the most appropriate intervention is designed (Step 3), implemented (Step 4), and evaluated and adjusted where necessary (Step 5).

The step-by-step guide assumes that the employees involved have no physical limitations that restrict their ability to be physically active. When following the guide, it is important to take into account employees with limited mobility or other physical limitations that may affect their ability to participate in or carry out the intervention.