What is considered excessive work related exposure?
Occupational sitting is common among workers, with one half of workers reporting sitting often or all of the time at work. Exposure to occupational sitting occurs across different industries and occupations.
There is no clear definition of excessive occupational sitting exposure. However, sitting for longer than 30 minutes without a mini-break, and sitting all day at work (being “too busy” to take a break) are likely to be detrimental to health. To date, assessment of occupational exposure has largely been focussed on office work environments, with limited evidence for exposure or interventions in non-office environments.
Ways to reduce prolonged sitting at work
A range of initiatives has been proposed to reduce prolonged sitting at work, including those focussed on the design of safe work systems via the work environment (physical and psychosocial), work tasks, work tools and the individual worker. Multi-component interventions targeting multiple elements of work systems appear to have been most successful.
Good job design can use substitution and breaks to minimise the harm from excessive sitting at work. Safe Work Australia recently published a handbook on the Principles of Good Work Design. It contains 10 principles which demonstrate how to achieve good design of work and work processes, which are all general in nature so they can be applied to any workplace.
Simple interventions can interrupt prolonged occupational sitting by substituting sitting with non-sedentary tasks, such as switching to work on a computer at a standing workstation, standing to read a document, having a standing or walking meeting, standing while talking on the phone, or walking to deliver a message to a colleague rather than emailing. In essence, employers and workers should aim for small and frequent changes from sitting as much as possible and less time sitting in total.
Conclusion
Available evidence suggests that prolonged sitting is common in Australian workplaces. Prolonged sitting is associated with significant negative health outcomes, and is increasingly being recognised in the community as an important issue that needs attention. There have been a number of initiatives that have demonstrated some success in reducing occupational sitting exposure in some industries and occupations.
Source: SafeWork Australia, March 2016