Interventions for promoting physical activity and/or reducing sedentary behaviour in the workplace for older workers: A scoping review
What were we trying to do?
We aimed to identify workplace interventions that successfully promoted physical activity in older workers, and explore what the active components of these interventions were to inform the development of future, effective interventions that:
- improved the health and wellbeing of older workers
- enabled them to continue to engage in work
- improved work outcomes.
Active ingredients of interventions (i.e., behaviour change techniques) were defined as ‘components within an intervention that could be linked to its effect on outcomes such that, if they were omitted, the intervention would likely be ineffective’.
The purpose of this scoping review was to identify and map the available evidence for interventions aimed at promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviours in older workers, identifying gaps in the evidence base to inform further study and establish active components (behaviour change techniques) that could be employed in future, effective workplace interventions.
Why was this important?
Work is evidenced widely as being beneficial for physical and mental health and wellbeing, whilst being unemployed is associated with poorer health and wellbeing, higher mortality and morbidity. It is predicted, however, that many older workers will be forced out of employment in coming years and miss out on the benefits of engaging in work due to ill health. Physical inactivity is a major modifiable risk factor associated with long-term health conditions and non-communicable diseases, such as chronic musculoskeletal pain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression and several cancers. In older age, it can additionally negatively affect aerobic capacity, walking capacity, strength, flexibility, balance, and mental and cognitive capacity.
Engaging in and maintaining sufficient levels of physical activity, in contrast, is known to have a number of advantages for physical and mental health and for promoting healthy ageing. Despite this, almost 25% of people aged 50 to 70 report doing less than thirty minutes of physical activity in total per week. Moreover, sedentary time and physical inactivity are increasing in the workplace. Improving physical activity levels and reducing sedentary time at work could have wide benefits for both the health and wellbeing of older workers and work-related outcomes. Healthier workers are more productive, have lower risks for sick leave and are more engaged in their work.
Workplace interventions aimed at promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviours in general working-age participants have shown beneficial effects on work outcomes. Those targeting older workers, in contrast, exist but are not well established. We identified and mapped interventions targeting physical activity and sedentary behaviour in older workers and explored the impact these interventions had on health, wellbeing and work outcomes.
How did we do it
For the full details of the review protocol, please visit Open Science Framework:
Who were we working with?
More information:
Programme Manager
Alison Littlewood
alison.j.littlewood@manchester.ac.uk