Many organizations including the WHO, AMA, NIH and EU-OSHA and others around the globe have called out the pressing need for employers to mitigate the well-understood and significant health risks from prolonged static postures.
Underpinning this pressing need, abundant evidence from a growing number of significant studies has been published confirming significant health problems, for the average otherwise-healthy population, resulting from prolonged static postures particularly involving prolonged sitting at work.
The lead author of a recent significant study, Columbia University Medical Center’s Keith Diaz, PhD, stated: “We’ve known for probably about a decade now that sitting increases your risk for most chronic diseases and increases your risk for early death.”
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) published a compelling fact-filled paper, “Musculoskeletal Disorders and Prolonged Static Sitting” at the start of the recent global pandemic which unfortunately couldn’t compete in the news at the time with the growing deadly pandemic and had little coverage compared to if it were published at any other time.
While we’ve cited this article previously, today we’ll unpack the EU-OSHA publication’s regulatory content and also explore what it means to Safety Professionals and their employers no matter if you live in the EU, Toronto, Abu Dhabi or New York City. Evidently, the enormous human and financial costs are becoming even more well-understood.
The publication begins: “Sedentary behaviour is widespread. It is to be expected that more and more workers will be confronted with sedentary type of tasks due to further automation and computerization. Sedentary behaviour leads to various health risks. Besides musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), prolonged sitting may also lead to health risks in other domains, such as diabetes, heart- and vascular disease, depression and even mortality.
“Sedentary behaviour is increasing both at work and in private life, this is why attention must be paid to this health risk. Replacing sitting by standing is not always the solution, as prolonged standing can also, may result in health risks. This is why it is considered important to change between postures as much as possible.“
Placing This In Perspective
The publication continues: “Prolonged sitting is an increasing occupational health risk in the workplace. Due to the use of computers and other similar devices, many workers are tied to their desks for prolonged periods of time. Where previously the nature of work required workers to move around in the office, e.g. to put something in a filing cabinet, now many tasks just require a mouse click. Due to digitalization and automation, there has been an increase of the amount of screen work in recent years and this is expected to increase in the future.”
Numerous studies have shown that we can successfully mitigate these harmful impacts of prolonged static postures if we “break them up regularly, even for a few minutes every half hour while working”. This is dependent, naturally, on that people can remember to do it regularly – or better yet, make it into an automatic behavior (a habit).
The successful leadership action step here is simply to pivot the mindset. Stop needing to budget high expenses for unnecessary healthcare overutilization, ergonomic injuries, lost productivity and more and to invest instead in time-tested strategies to help employees and the employer’s bottom line. Here we find much “low hanging fruit to pick” as the experts say.
Example Health Effects of Static Postures
The publication cites Low Back, Neck and Shoulder plus Lower Limb problems as some of the most quickly manifesting effects. In addition, it also prominently cites chronic effects “Prolonged sitting is also associated with a spectrum of other health risks, including diminished cardiovascular health (including vascular function, circulation and blood pressure problems and heart disease), cancer, diabetes, weight gain, metabolic syndromes, higher risk of psychological distress, muscle degeneration, osteoporosis and a higher rate of mortality.“
All of these have direct serious impacts on employees and their employers. Although the publication guides “Groups most at risk of experiencing prolonged sitting are those working in offices.“, it also reviews other types of work which include deleterious static postures such as laboratory work.
Regulatory Requirements and Guidance
Relevant regulatory oversight on static postures varies across the globe, for now. For the astute reader, however, looking for the regulations in my locale is secondary to understanding the nature of the issue and how it affects our employees’ and company’s health, financial condition and wellbeing.
While there are, of course, relevant regulations in many countries beyond the European Union, from the EU-OSHA publication specifically:
- While prolonged sitting is not specifically covered by any EU regulations or directives, all employers in the EU have general duties to carry out risk assessments and bring in preventive measures based in the assessments. Any workers who habitually use display screen equipment as a significant part of their normal work are covered by regulations on display screen equipment, which include providing them with a suitable workstation and chair and breaks.
- General provisions on the prevention of musculoskeletal disorders in Sweden state that workstations, jobs and work environment conditions should be designed and arranged in such a way that risks of physical loads both static and dynamic which are dangerous to health or unnecessarily fatiguing or stressful are averted.
- In The Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs provides the following guidelines for working seated and/or standing: Sit for a maximum of 2 hours, then take a break of sitting for at least 10 minutes (standing, walking, cycling). Sit for a maximum of 5 hours totally at work on a working day. Guidance from The Netherlands also advices working in an active manner and alternating between sitting, standing and walking.
- The Belgian Ergonomic Society advocates: At work: after every 30 minutes stand up for 10 minutes, in this case at least 12 standing moments of 10 minutes per day will be obtained.
- Australia’s Beupstanding campaign, devised by the University of Queensland, simply proposes: Spend 50% or less of your work day time sitting. Avoid long periods of sitting – aim to get up every 30 minutes.
- The European Display Screen Equipment Directive, which is implemented in each EU Member State today, states that “the employer must plan the worker's activities in such a way that daily work on a display screen is periodically interrupted by breaks or changes of activity reducing the workload at the display screen".
- In Austria, display screen equipment (DSE) workers are entitled to a 10-minute break after each 50-minute period of working in front of a screen.
- In France employers must adapt the working time of employees working on a screen after a risk assessment is carried out and a worker’s activity must be scheduled in such way that daily screen time is periodically interrupted by breaks or changes of activity.
- In Poland, employees are entitled to a break of at least five minutes after each hour of work.
- In Italy, DSE workers are entitled to a 15-minute break for every two hours of continuous use.
- In Estonia, DSE workers have the right to breaks of at least 10% of the time the employee works with the computer (for example, 6 minutes for every 60 minutes of work or 3 minutes for every 30 minutes).
- In Ireland, the Health and Safety Authority’s official guidance on work breaks and display screen equipment work covers four important points: Rest breaks or changes in the pattern of work, where they are necessary, should be taken before fatigue sets in. Some employees suffer symptoms from the effort used to keep up performance while fatigued. The employee should not sit in the same position for long periods and make sure to change posture as often as practicable. Short frequent rest breaks are more satisfactory than longer breaks taken occasionally. Rest breaks should be taken away from the VDU. Other duties may be assigned during this period, provided they are not too intensive.
- In some countries there are also employer trade union agreements at the company level regarding working with display screen equipment.
Best Practice Behaviors
For each of you professionals already providing employees with training and better adjustable furniture and equipment, we tip our hat to you as your instincts and efforts are spot on since every employee can benefit from these elements of the solution.
Applied Behavioral Analysis, however, teaches that there’s still one more integral piece required to bind these elements together to become an effective sustainable behavioral improvement and effectively mitigate the risk.
Changing how people do something can appear simple on the surface. So, why don’t we all simply, abruptly and forever change our behaviors after simply taking a course or being given information and told to do something? As you would expect, there are well-known reasons.
Yet another significant challenge is that most employees using computers have had years of repetition to reinforce their unhealthful behaviors so we need to crowd-out the unhealthful behaviors with healthy behaviors.
Science and history have shown that you can improve these safety behaviors of integrating neutral postures, moving about periodically, and pacing with a point-of-use operant conditioning positive reinforcement tool being used.
Coaching: The Glue That Binds Knowledge Into Sustainable Behavior Change
Beyond evidence-based science, including Psychology and Applied Behavioral Analysis which both laud coaching, the benefits of having a coach are self-evident in all aspects of human behavior including, just a few as examples:
- Sports, Amateur, Professional, even Olympians, etc...
- Music, Learning to Play, Singing, etc...
- Life Coaching
- Executive and Leadership Coaching
- Wellness Coaching, Yoga, Mindfulness, Meditation
Evidence-based ErgoSuite Coach, helping people improve their behaviors since 2000, elegantly embodies the very best of Applied Behavioral Analysis and Operant Conditioning to help office-based and home-office-based employees learn to make good ergonomic behaviors automatic.
Its unique patented methods observe activity and recovery time in order to personally and gently coach users precisely when needed to prevent inflammation, tissue damage and help make neutral postures, movement, micro-breaks and stretching all automatic behaviors for optimal employee health, safety and wellness. ErgoSuite Coach gently and positively reinforces the desired employee behaviors.
Imagine if you had a virtual extension of yourself who will personally visit with each and every employee today, teach them key actionable best practices of computer ergonomics, help them assess and tune-up their work area and thereafter personally coach them to learn to automatically move about and stretch periodically while they work, without having to think about it.