Avoiding Sedentary Work: Exploring Motivational Issues

In this paper we present a qualitative study on motivations for avoiding sedentary work. Sedentary work has been recognized as a significant public health problem and many workplaces now invest in initiatives to support employees in avoiding it. The initiative in focus here include bikes, treadmills, step machines and adjustable workstations combined with a digital platform to keep track of activities and to make relevant information available. Experiences indicates that while employees are excited at the beginning, the use of exercise tools drop relatively fast. In order to understand motivation for use, clarify challenges and identify opportunities to support use of exercise tools through the digital platform we did interviews with employees and decision makers from four different companies. The overall challenge identified was pressure of busyness and reasons for use was due to individual objectives. Thus, in order to support employees in avoiding sedentary work the digital platform should provide facilities which allow for formulating and pursuing individual objective.