It’s time to step it up at work

Try to skip the elevator, hit the stairs

Despite a steady push by health and wellness experts to get us out of our chairs more often, most Canadians still spend the majority of their 9-to-5 day in front of a computer.

We are so entrenched in our sedentary habits that, unless we change how we work, there’s little chance of chipping away at the 10 hours a day we spend sitting.

The latest recommendation to counteract chronic inactivity is to cut down the time spent in a chair by two hours a day, an ambitious goal for anyone without a standing desk or some other gadget designed to get office workers off their butts.

But before you crack open your wallet, there is a budget-friendly solution at most offices that has the potential to bump up the fitness level of the average office worker.

Opting for the stairs instead of the elevator is an easy way to boost your daily exercise quota.

And unlike trying to negotiate a workout at your desk — which, despite a much-anticipated change in workplace culture, still causes eyebrows to raise — climbing the stairs won’t disrupt the office vibe.

With a decreased willingness to climb stairs above two flights, most companies have their work cut out for them if they hope to get their employees to move more and sit less.

One French company pulled together a project team to create a strategy for spreading the word about the benefits of opting for the stairs instead of the elevator.

Knowing that similar efforts at other companies hadn’t achieved much of a buy-in, they worked with a couple of researchers who scheduled two interventions each a few months apart.

The challenge was not only to promote the use of stairs, but to make the change last, which is where most companies fail.

The first step was a simple campaign that included motivational posters placed between the stairs and elevator. The posters featured images of office workers climbing stairs along with text claiming “climbing stairs burns as many calories per minute as tennis.”

The posters changed weekly, with different images and text, in an attempt to keep the messages fresh. Also included with the posters were directional arrows pointing the way to the stairs.

Three months later, the second phase of the campaign was instituted. This included sprucing up the stairwells. Stickers were placed on stair risers, with each floor sporting a different colour and motivational message. How well did the campaign work? Unbeknownst to the employees, counters in the stairwells collected data over the course of the study. The first set of numbers was gathered before any of the stair-climbing interventions were instituted, providing a baseline number of people already using the stairs. The count was repeated soon after the second phase was underway, and again three and seven months later.

There was little change in behaviour with just the addition of posters and directional signs. But once the stairwells were dressed up with stickers, stair-climbing increased by almost 19 per cent, which translated to about 35 more people using the stairs each day.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned. First, getting people to forgo the elevator takes more than putting up a few posters with catchy phrases. Multiple interventions spaced over several weeks offer better results than a single big push.

Also, key to the success of any initiative to change corporate behaviour is top-down buy-in.

That’s accomplished by including senior executives and mid-level managers on the project team. Another positive is the low cost. Posters and directional signs are easy to create. Improvements to the esthetics of the stairwell were accomplished with stickers.

A creative strategy spread out over several weeks can gently lead employees away from the elevator and toward the stairs.

The downside of this experiment is that employees slowly returned to their pre-study ways, which suggests that changing behaviour is a long-term project. For businesses taking a cue from this study, consider extending the program to 12 months worth of posters, stairwell stickers, email prompts, team challenges and more.