Getting up, out and active with the Walk at Work Award

Employers are facing new challenges and opportunities around how to reduce sedentary behaviour and prolonged periods of desk time.  The Office for National Statistics found 44% of people reported home or hybrid working, with 56% travelling to the workplace. 46% of those returning to working in the office were reportedly unable to work from home, with the remaining 10% choosing to work from the office, but able to work from home if they wished.

The UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per day for adults. However, many of us don’t yet meet this target.

Promoting physical activity during the working day can offer incredible benefits to both employer and employee including improved physical health and mental wellbeing, reduced sick days, and increased productivity. Importantly, encouraging activities around movement can boost social cohesion amongst staff, and alleviates stress and anxiety.

Launched in 2018, our Walk at Work Award is an accreditation scheme which recognises and celebrates the hard work and efforts of employers across Scotland to encourage physical activity in and around the working day. We offer support to workplaces who want to make positive changes in their working culture around three key themes - a healthier workforce, a greener workforce, and an active workforce.

In this episode we welcome Sarah Turner, Development Officer in our Workplaces team. Sarah, who manages the Walk at Work Award scheme and our national Step Count Challenges, offers valuable insight into what the Award involves, and how to take part.

We're also joined by Katrina Schofield, Sustrans Workplace Engagement Officer for NHS Grampian and Morven Sambrook, Physiotherapist whom together with the Healthy Working Lives group at Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen achieved their own Walk at Work Award by encouraging staff and patients to find new ways to stay physically active throughout the day. They explore how the Award has benefitted the physical, mental and social wellbeing of staff at the Royal Cornhill Hospital.

Find out more about our Walk at Work Award here. 

Transcript

Introduction Welcome to Voices of the Walk, Paths for All’s everyday walking podcast. Our mission is to get Scotland walking; everywhere, everyone, every day. In this podcast series, we’ll be hearing from a variety of Scotland’s walking champions who are helping make our vision a reality.

Steven Hello, I’m Steven, I’m a communications and marketing officer at Paths for All and the host of this podcast episode. We’ll be exploring our Walk at Work award and the benefits that workplaces can enjoy by taking part. I’m joined by Sarah Turner, development officer in our workplaces team at Paths For all, alongside Katrina Schofield and Morven Sambrook from the Royal Cornhill hospital in Aberdeen. Before we get started, for the benefit of our listeners, can you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your roles.

Sarah My name’s Sarah, I’m the workplace development officer at Paths for All. I work on the workplaces team, and we provide advice and support to workplaces that want to encourage their employees to walk more. I run the step count challenge and the Walk at Work award, which are our two main engagement tools for workplaces, and we also have an online workplace walking course, as well.

Katrina Hi, my names Katrina Schofield, and I work for Sustrans as workplace engagement officer for NHS Grampian. So, what that means basically, is that with my role I encourage and support staff to use active and sustainable travel at work. So, walking, cycling, wheeling or any other forms of active travel.

Morven I’m Morven Sambrook and I am a physiotherapist in Cornhill hospital, which is part of NHS Grampian, and I am part of the Healthy Working Lives group within Cornhill Hospital.

Steven Welcome to you all and thanks for joining me. We’re now into the fourth year of our Walk at Work award, which was launched in 2018. Sarah, for those who have never heard of the Walk at Work award or are interested in taking part, could you tell us more about what the award is and what’s involved?

Sarah Yeah, sure. So, the Walk at Work award is an accreditation award for workplaces that recognises and celebrates employers who are really going the extra mile to encourage their staff to walk more during the working day. So, what we ask a workplace who signs up to take part, we ask them to carry out a series of actions across a maximum of six months and those actions have to be across three different themes: there’s walking community, walking facilities and walking culture. So, we have a list of presubscribed actions, quite a flexible list, both online and in person actions which a workplace can take part in. Generally, a workplace will devise their own action plan. We do ask for at least one action from each theme but apart from that we leave it up to the workplace to decide what they want to take part in. Because, as mentioned previously, no workplace is the same and one set of actions won’t fit with every single workplace that we engage with. 

It will very much be kind of about what a workplace feels they have power to do and feel able to do with their staff and their particular situation and the resources that they have available to them as well. For walking culture, we have; running a staff travel survey, providing information on how to travel to and from your workplace by walking, wheeling or public transport. For walking facilities, it's things like providing an area to dry shoes and coats in or even providing a map of local walking routes around the media area around your workplace. Walking community has things to do with, you know, the wider community in which your workplace sits. So that's things like taking part in a step count challenge, for example, or encouraging your staff to share walking routes, photos, fun things online as well. So yeah, it's just about creating that sense of community around walking and, you know, using walking as a tool to kind of build kind of that staff engagement and that team working.

Steven Can you tell us a little bit more about the benefits workplaces can enjoy by encouraging their staff to be physically active in and around the working day.

Sarah So the benefits of encouraging staff to walk more in and around the working day it’s really important to kind of include within the working day as well as around the working day. Walking at work doesn't necessarily just mean walking to and from work, it can mean going for a walk at lunchtime, it can mean allocating time during the week for staff to be physically active. So, it can mean all kinds of different things. Really, it's all just about encouraging movement during the working day and making sure that the workplace is the kind of place where people feel they can just get up and go for a walk to clear their head for 10 minutes, just trying to normalise that kind of behaviour, basically. Walking is fantastic for people's mental health and physical health as well. And that's something which increasingly workplaces are coming to me, and they're really quite concerned about staff wellbeing, staff health. We know that in 2020 and 2021, the rates of long-term sickness associated with workplaces. According to the health and safety executive, 1.7 million workers suffering from work related ill health; 50% of those workers were related to anxiety, depression. So, it's a huge issue, workplace health, particularly coming out of COVID-19 pandemic. 

There's a real renewed focus from workplaces, on staff health and well-being. There are fantastic health benefits from being physically active. So, the UK chief medical officers obviously got their recommended physical activity. So that's 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity per week, which includes walking. So, if staff are encouraged to at least sort of during the day contribute somewhere towards that target of 150 minutes per week, the reduction in risks of various diseases associated with that there's a 40% reduction in your risk of developing type two diabetes. If you're reaching those 150 minutes, there's a 35% reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease, heart disease stroke, also associated with those 150 minutes. There's a 30% reduction in risk of developing depression and dementia as well. So, there's some fantastic health benefits associated with encouraging people to walk more.

Steven Now, Katrina and Morven, The Royal Cornhill Hospital recently took part in and successfully completed the Walk at Work award accreditation. Can you tell us a little bit more about the inspiration behind taking part in the award?

Katrina So Morven and I met through the Healthy Working Lives Group. So, that's a group that focuses on staff welfare and within Cornhill hospitals. So, when I joined the group, they were already talking about a lot of work that they'd done to encourage staff to be active. And it seems like there was lots of good ideas and a lot that was already happening. So, it seemed a shame for all those ideas to go to waste or not be recognised essentially. And I heard about the Walk at Work award through other Sustrans colleagues, and it sounded like a really good thing to do to make sure that these ideas actually were actioned and actually came into place. And then it's a way of being recognised as well for all the hard work.

Morven And I think one of the things that we had in place was the idea of doing walks around in the hospital. And actually, we were really struggling for finance at that point to get it done. But actually, Sustrans and Katrina stepped in and helped us to get that done. And that was a huge thing, because it's been something we've been trying to do for quite a long time.

Katrina Yeah, so luckily, I was able to help, always helps when you can bring some money to the table. But it is important for there to be investment in active travel, because it's something that can help with being more sustainable if you're looking at giving money to supporting people to walk and cycle but also the idea of the walking routes onsite was more about helping staff to keep active while they're at work. Because a lot of staff might be office based, or staff might have no option but to drive to work. So then making sure that they actually have that space to be active while they're at work was really important.

Morven And part of that really was that because the professional kind of boundaries and stuff, we’re not wearing our uniforms off site. So, it was really important that we had trails within the within the hospital grounds, which all staff could access while they're still in the uniform. In other words, we didn't have to go out of the bounds of the hospital. And we had we had this plan, and then Katrina was really able to help us facilitate it, which was really helpful.

Katrina Yeah, so what they really needed was some signage, basically, to show where the routes were so that staff could clearly find their way around the routes. And also the sign promotes the routes itself. So that was our first project really, and then once we got working on that, I thought, well, this will be a great way to start doing the rest of the work towards the award. So that sort of kicked everything off.

Steven At Paths for All, we encourage people to find new and lasting ways to connect with nature. You mentioned walking trails around the hospital grounds. Can you tell us a little bit more about these trails?

Morven Okay, so before Katrina had joined us and helped to facilitate all this, we had this plan of having walks around the grounds and as I said, that was partly because we were limited within our uniforms, to walk within the grounds and we recognised that people had quite short breaks and we wanted it to be something they could do within the ground. So, we looked at some trails, and the trails are either 10 minutes, 15 minutes or 20 minutes. And their names are Refresh, Revive, Reboot. So, you can see that they were around trying to get staff, like with Refresh. If I've had a particularly difficult morning, for instance, and I have the opportunity, I can go out and do a Refresh walk, and it might be walking with another member of our team or another colleague and discussing things but it gives me the opportunity to direct me to go and do that. And as I said, you know, we had funding from Sustrans which was fantastic, which allowed us to have, there's a kind of smart app, not that I'm very good at using I hasten to add, but you're able to kind of clock it and we can see how effective that is. So, it's really trying to encourage staff to do that. And also, the Reboot one, which is a bit further out, perhaps, genuinely let people go to bits of the hospital grounds they might never have been to, they probably normally just come to their car, go into work and go, but that actually explored other bits of the hospital grounds which are out beyond the immediate area. So, there was lots of positive things about it.

Steven Earlier, we discussed that taking part in the Walk at Work award involves encouraging staff to be physically active more often throughout the day. This presents opportunities for workplaces to promote physical activity among staff using a wide range of techniques and activities. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you did this at Royal Cornhill hospital?

Katrina I can start with that one. So, the first one of the activities that I did came out of doing the plan. So, when you sign up for the Walk at Work aboard, it gives you a plan for different things that you're going to do in terms of culture and community and facilities around the workplace. So, we'd already done the facilities by putting in some new walk trails around the site, but a lot of people still didn't know about them. So as a way of promoting them, I thought it'd be a fun idea to do an Easter egg hunt, because everyone loves an Easter egg hunt. But it would be really hard to find a time where all staff could do it. Because staff are busy, and especially clinical staff, you can't just get away. So, I designed it in a way that it was something staff could do in their own time. So, it was actually open for two weeks. And it was more like a treasure hunt/Easter egg hunt. So, there were eggs with letters on that you had to find, and they were colour coordinated with the same colours of the routes. So, you would walk around and then find all the letters to make up a word. And if you submitted the right word, then you've got to put into a prize draw for chocolate eggs. So obviously, people actually want chocolate eggs at the end of an Easter egg hunt. So that was a fun thing to do and we did get feedback from that, that a lot of people hadn't heard of the trails until they did the Easter egg hunt. So, I think it did work and in terms of promoting the trails, but there's still work to be done. Like I think a lot of people probably still walk past the sign and haven't actually bothered to look at it. So, I definitely would like to do some more.

Morven And other things, perhaps not so recently, but we've had kind of like a buddy up at lunchtime for a walk, there's been a time that we had some you could stand at the door, meet somebody go for a quick walk. And we have a walking group as well after work. And we've been trying to encourage sort of walk/jog/running, I guess the challenges of that sometimes are time for staff because a lot of people in hospitals work shifts, so they're not always available at the same time. And ultimately, we had to kind of go with what suited the people who were the walk leaders. And I would say that's probably something we need to look at, again, in terms of actual just activity within the kind of hospital there are, they've built a new cycling shed, which is very impressive, and encouraging people to come cycling and the security of that. And we have yoga classes via kind of online. In a kind of small way, I really encourage people just to take the stairs, rather than the lift. We have signs up during the hospital encouraging people to do that. And yeah, that was part of our work for the awards, 

Katrina And a lot of the award is just quick wins like that, but they can be effective.

Morven And I think you know, in terms of kind of leadership and stuff, we should be encouraging our staff just take a moment when they can and that to me those kinds of Refresh walks that's where they really play into it. You know you're having you might have had a difficult situation, provide a safe, perhaps go have 10 minutes, just decompress a bit, have a bit of fresh air and again, that fits with all the all the ideas behind you know, Paths for All and walking at work.

Steven One of our offers at Paths for All is a bespoke step count challenge for individual workplaces. Now these operate in a similar fashion to our national challenges which take place in Spring and Autumn of each year. Now I believe that the Royal Cornhill Hospital is very familiar with the challenges having taken part in three of them so far. Katrina, could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Katrina So, one of the most popular ones is the step challenge, which is a Paths for All bespoke step challenge that we've been doing. So, this year, we ran the third annual NHS Grampian step challenge. So, there were two before I was even in post here, but when I heard about it, I was like, oh, this is great. I want to get involved with this. So myself and my colleague in public health, we worked on that together. And we had the biggest sign up yet. So, we had about 1000 people signed up. And at the end of the challenge, it was a four week challenge, we had 947 active participants who had actually logged steps in the challenge, and that was great. So, we had workplaces all across NHS Grampian, who were taking part. And it was from mid-January to mid-February, which was a really good time to do it. Because, you know, there's always that slump after Christmas, there's the big build up to Christmas, or other festivities that people might celebrate as well. And then you get to January, and it's dark, and people have to go back to work. And there's just always like that little bit of blues that everyone has. So, it just lifted everyone's spirits, which was really great. And it was a reason to get outside and to be active and to meet up with people, which otherwise, you know, people might have struggled to motivate themselves to do.

Morven Yeah, we did part of that challenge, and we went walking at lunchtime, which is really useful, because let's just say often, it's quite dark, but it got us out during the day. And I suppose if you think about your vitamin D, it's getting a bit of  daylight, and so forth, that's really important. The downside for us, so physiotherapists are notoriously competitive. And of course, we had somebody who ended up with a groin strain because they've done so much walking.

Katrina But I've been part of that as well, we do try. Something that hadn't been done before, I was sending out weekly newsletters, so there'd be health and safety messages within that because slips trips, and falls are a big risk in winter. So, just making people aware of how to minimise those risks and, and also we would send out little weekly competitions. Sounds like some groups were already very competitive. But just for other people, you know, four weeks is quite long to keep them motivated. So, we did weekly competitions, we had like a bingo challenge, things to look out for on your walks, a photography challenge and those sort of things as well. So yeah, so it was really good fun. And we will be running another one next year.

Morven Yeah. And I guess the other thing to say is actually there were like umbrellas provided for when it was wet. There was high vis jackets provided, I think there might have even been shoes. I'm thinking that we had some boots.

Katrina Yeah, so Jackie, who runs the Healthy Working Lives Group, she seemed to be in charge of that. She told me about that. So that was some resources they were given out over winter, like the boot trackers to help prevent slips, trips and falls. So, it's just making staff aware that these things were available for them and pedometers as well were given out.

Steven Well, taking part in the Walk at Work award is a hugely beneficial undertaking for both the employer and employees. One of the biggest challenges faced by a workplace can be encouraging staff to take part and to find new ways to stay active in and around the working day. Can we explore some of the barriers you faced and what opportunities arose to support staff to be active?

Katrina One challenge can be just lack of motivation, whether that's to do with the weather, or people's work or personal circumstances. Doing a challenge, like a step challenge can be so good, not just at motivating people at the time of the challenge, but the effects can often be longer term than that. So, we actually did a feedback survey, which we sent out to all the participants. So, we did one a week after the challenge and then we did another three months after the challenge. So, we found that a week after the challenge 50% of the participants who responded, they said that they'd been more active. And they were still more active a week after. And then three months after it was still 50%. So those 50% of people like it hadn't dropped, they were still reporting that they were being more active. So, it had a had a long-term effect on their behaviour and their habits.

Morven Yeah, I think that's the key thing is to make it kind of habit forming, and then it becomes something people do, intrinsically. All I would say is I don't think it's complicated to do the Walk at Work stuff. I there's nothing that we've done. That was well, I'm saying that you've also done quite a lot of it, but a lot of the initiatives that we've done have not been high tech, they're not really difficult. They're easily transferable to other places. It's just about trying to show the benefits of walking, get people walking, and then from that, that will get them doing a bit more walking. So just habit forming really, I think,

Katrina Yeah, and I think going off what Morven said there, there are, you know, more ambitious things that you can do there, like we did with the walking trails. But, you know, if a workplace doesn't necessarily have the budget, that doesn't mean that they can't do that because there are some easy wins that you can do that can have big impact. So even like the stickers, encouraging people to take the stairs, if that's getting more exercise into their day and allowing them to get their heart rate up that can have a big benefit for those workers. And also, things like having umbrellas, so, people can walk between sites, if that's something they have to do for work or walk for business journeys instead of having to take the car. So, it could just be really simple things that can help support your staff to work that maybe just haven't been done, because no one's really dedicated the time to put a plan into place and think, oh, actually, we'll do these things. And the Walk at Work award is really great because it allows you to make that plan and sit down and think about what you can do that that would help that to walk more.

Morven And from a physio perspective, people often say to me, what's the best exercise for your back? Actually, the best exercise is walking. Everything else they do helps as well. But walking is actually the most important one, and it's easy to do, it’s cheap, and we should really be encouraging people to do it.

Steven So, we've now come to the end of the podcast episode. I'd like to thank you for coming along today to talk about your experience of taking part in the Walk at Work award. Sarah, for any workplace keen to take part in the walk at work award, how do they find out more?

Sarah So, to find out more about the Walk at Work award, you can go on Paths for All website, there's a page in the workplace section specifically about the Walk at Work award. You can download a copy of the handbook and have a look through to see, find out a little bit more about the actions that workplaces can take part in. And there's also a form whereby you can contact the workplaces team directly to ask for a meeting or a phone call if you'd like to discuss things further.