Employees can exercise, stay away from cigarettes and other unhealthy habits, and be generally physically active, but if they’re chained to their chairs for more than three hours a day, they could lose up to two years off their life expectancy, according to a recent medical study.

Want to stack the odds even more? Employees who go home and watch more than 2 hours of TV a day can whack another 1.4 years off their expected lifespan.

(Have you stood up yet since you began reading this? You’re not the only one.)

Telling people that being active for 30 minutes a day is enough to ward sedentary lethargy isn’t enough, one of the lead researchers said.

It’s great to exercise and be active — but there are still a lot of hours left in the work day that need to be accounted for.

Problem is, not many jobs these days lend themselves to spending a lot of time on your feet.

Some suggestions you can make to employees to help counterbalance the risks of spending too much time in their seat:

• Start taking your phone calls on the speaker phone, so you can stand up while you’re talking.
• Instead of sending someone in your building — near or far — an email, get up and walk to that person’s work area and talk about it, and
• Set a time each day to walk outside. Recruit a couple of co-workers and it’ll help all of you to keep your commitment, and prevent the boredom of a solitary walker.

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The study, authored by a Cleveland State economics professor, says that people work harder at retaining their physical health see a sizable boost in their fiscal well-being — earning about 9% more than those who don’t.

While Professor Vasilios Kosteas says there is a connection between exercise habits and making more money, he was reluctant to commit to why that situation exists.

He plans to do research to pin it down further.

That’s because there’s anecdotal knowledge that backs up the exercise-more money idea, but it’s hard to link physical fitness directly to someone’s paycheck.

For instance, employees who exercise regularly say they experience improved energy, focus and motivation. When employees exhibit these traits, they’re more likely to be rewarded.

Some supervisors also say that employees who exercise regularly are more highly disciplined. Success in the gym can equal success in the workplace.

These relationships discussed in The Effect of Exercise on Earning (Preliminary Draft) deserve further study, Professor Kosteas says.

But even at its present stage, it’s intriguing enough that supervisors might want to take notice of the difference between employees who exercise and those who don’t.

Is it a more effective way to encourage people to get off the couch? Would it help if employees knew it could lead to better pay?

Have you had any experiences of your own concerning the quality — and pay — of employees who exercise and those who don’t? Share it below.

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Spending too much time in your seat at work has been shown to increase the likelihood of cardiac and metabolic afflictions, as well as the risk of death from “all causes” (aka premature death, according to the New South Wales Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages).

The study ran from 2006 until 2010, and collected data from nearly 222,500 Australians who were 45 and older.

It looked at sitting time at work, in conjunction with gender, age, education, urban/rural residency, body mass index, smoking status, physical activity, disability and self-rated health.

So what’s an HR professional to do?

In addition to promoting physical activity and taking more short breaks as a way for employees to stay healthy, help them develop a more active lifestyle at work by encouraging a few simple behavioral changes:

• Dump the big water bottle. Urge employees to use a container that holds 8 oz. They’ll get up out of their seat more regularly — to fill up the cup and to empty their bladder, if they’re getting their 8 glasses a day.
• Try old-fashioned communication. How many times a day do people in the office email each other — even if their desks are close to each other? Remind people that the most-effective way to communicate is face-to-face. It saves time, too, as opposed to a back-and-forth email exchange.
• “But I don’t remember to get up.” It’s likely you’ll hear this excuse. Help the employee (perhaps with a hand from IT) to set a regular alarm in that person’s calendar that’ll go off every hour. This can be a great reminder. Consider keeping it subtle, so the worker doesn’t drive his neighbors crazy.

The post Sitting on your butt all day could be killing you — even if you exercise! appeared first on HR Daily Report.

In a study in the Journal of Business and Psychology, “Supervisor Workplace Stress and Abusive Supervision: The Buffering Effect of Exercise,”  researchers asked 98 employees to rate how their supervisors treated them, by responding to statements like “puts me down in front of others.” The researchers then had supervisors of the 98 workers fill out a different survey on the frequency of exercise and the levels of stress the bosses experienced.

Here’s what came out of the two surveys:

• The less exercise a boss got, the more employees felt belittled by the boss
• Bosses who got less exercise reported feeling more stressed, which of course could lead to the bosses’ belittling of employees, and
• The type and amount of exercise a boss needed to get better marks from employees wasn’t varied and often not all that much; included in the types of exercise were yoga, cardio and weight lifting, and in some instances the activity took place only once or twice a week.

That last finding is a real revelation to students of wellness, because for years we’ve been told the real benefits of exercise kick in when the activity is performed on an almost-daily basis. Certainly, fitness improves in proportion to how often one gets exercise. But the study shows that even a minimum frequency of exercise appears to lower stress levels and produce a better overall outlook.

The post Why you should tell your managers — and your boss — to take a walk appeared first on HR Daily Report.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, consultant and author Peter Bregman, lists six small strategies that do more than just motivate you to get into shape. (If you’re reading this, you’re already motivated):

• Create the right environment. Have your workout clothes sitting by your bed and put them on first thing when you wake up. In fact, work out first thing, before your mind realizes what you’re doing.
• Team up with a trainer or partner. Committing to a friend or someone else increases the accountability factor.
• Make exercise part of your schedule. List it on a calendar, or use whatever other scheduling device you employ for activities and commitments.
• Devise a simple, concrete plan. Use numbers. Example: six days a week, 45 minutes a day.
• Realize that reluctance is short lived. As soon as you put your sneakers on and start heading to the gym, your mind will give up arguing with you.
• Commit to one week at a time. The first week will be the most difficult. After that, you’ll go on auto-pilot for exercise.

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