Movement improves wellbeing & work engagement. In this study, you can use up to 35 minutes a day as a part of your paid work day to MOVE – and share your insights on these questions:

• how do you make movement part of your day, during this study, EVERY day?
• How do you feel when moving is part of your work day?
• How could your work environment be improved to support movement?
• HOW DO YOU DRAW THE LINE for what constitutes your “day”?
• for the length of this study – we are “paid” to be able to treat working out as part of work – a work task – and to schedule ourselves in to MOVE just as we would any other important meeting. How does that feel?
• how can interactive technology help explore and facilitate this engagement?
• How can interactive technology be designed to help support and build movement knowledge, skills and practice for work, for both individuals and teams?

Your insights in this study will help us co-design with you how work can better support healthier, better work engagement and effectiveness. YOUR experiences, based on engaging with movement yourself, are key to designing Work2.x here at USouthampon. EVERYONE – with or without a movement practice already – is NEEDED/INVITED to help co-design this healthier work culture (see What you Get below).

Sign up open from Feb 1 (Happy New Year) to Feb 14 (Love Yourself FIRST day) [now closed]

SUMMARY: take up to 35 movement minutes per day as part of your work day* – (get paid by work to MOVE) – All you have to do is MOVE – RECORD – REFLECT (see below for what that means). Sign up to participate and we’ll email you info including the link to our app to record your Daily Work Week Movement Minutes.

If that sounds good you can sign up right here and now [sign up now closed] and we’ll email you the rest closer to Feb 14

*part of your workday means – you can do your movement minutes any time of the day, like lunch or before work or whatever works for you – but if you like to move outside work hours, the study asks WHEN in your work day do you take that up to 35mins of time, back? During the study your movement minutes could be thought of AS a workday task.

If you’d like a little more information, scroll on! This Document includes

• Study Motivation
• Invitation
• what you get
• Participation: MOVE RECORD REFLECT
• how to start
• how create a team (what teams do, too)
• Why have a team
• Paths: Start where you are
• MORE related research
• TERMS (small print)
• Project Members

THE MOTIVATIONs FOR THIS STUDY: (1) We all need to MOVE
The RESEARCH is clear. We are moving less than before COVID. We are also working longer hours. Each of these factors contributes to health challenges, increased stress, presentism, fatigue, sickness-absence, and decreasing work engagement.
(2) WE CAN FEEL BETTER in this study, we’re exploring TWO established results from recent research (and industry practice)

• 1. That we need 35 minutes of vigorous exercise DAILY to mitigate the effects of sitting all day.
• In work deliberate movement (exercise) helps people feel MUCH better at work, too
• 2. that in organizations where folks can work out as part of their work day, work engagement and performance goes up (as many companies seem to be confirming)

In other words those 35 minutes a day give back way more than the time taken.

THE INVITATION – The University via your Unit/School/Faculty Heads invite you, when you sign up as participants in this study, to count up to 35 movement minutes a day as PART of your WORK DAY.

WHAT YOU GET from joining the study

• Up to 35 minutes a day – contributed to you by the UNI – as PART of your work day for working out. You can take those 35 minutes when that works for you (and your line manager). For example, if you workout at night or in the morning already – where will you get that 35 back from your work day? start later? leave sooner? longer coffee break? What helps you?
• FEELING BETTER, KINDER, HAPPIER, HEALTHIER – ask anyone who already works out regularly how that helps their energy and wellbeing and calmness. IF you already do that, now imagine getting that time back from your work day, too. Think of it as Physical PPE for the sedentary work place?
• SKILLS – A chance to try out what works for you in a strength and endurance practice – learn how to get and stay strong – for the rest of your life (see PATHS below). Even if you’re experienced – we have experiments you can try to get a little further down that path – to help from adaptation to recovery.
• BETTER WORK ENVIRONMENT – DESIGNED: BY YOU FOR YOU. Share your insights on bringing movement practice to your work culture environment/culture; help us help you (and the rest of us) build better work environments and practices to make physical health keep working after the study.

All you need to do to participate

MOVE – RECORD – REFLECT

move: up to 35 minutes a day (or 35 “movement minutes”)- doing anything you want that gets your heart rate up to a rate where you are breathing harder than standing. If you’d like suggestions, we have lots – see paths below

record: WHAT you did (dance, run, lift weights, play squash) WHEN (during work, morning, afternoon) and HOW LONG you moved . – We have an app for that! makes it easy to time or record.

reflect: from time to time record how you’re doing / feeling with this practice. How frequently you add those reflections is up to you: every day, every other day, once a week.

THE APP is based on feedback we’ve received from the first Phase of this pilot, run this past fall – some of you may have been participants! The new version is SO MUCH BETTER to make it easy-peasy either just to time or record your Movement Minutes or follow along with daily/weekly suggestions. YOU’LL SEE! Sign up, we’ll send you the link

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 HOW to START

• Sign up! Sign up between now and Feb 14, 2022, and we’ll make SURE you are emailed the link to the New and Improved Study App.
• put together your team or join a team (see How to Create a Team, below).
• ALL ABILITIES / EXPERIENCES WELCOME – ENCOURAGED – even if you’re allergic to “exercise”. That means START WHERE YOU ARE.
• Whether you have an established movement practice, or are just starting to explore fitness, or did it before and want to get back into it, or resist the thought of deliberate movement entirely (usually) – YOU ARE NEEDED. YOUR EXPERIENCES in the PILOT are CRUCIAL to help understand your own work culture and how to improve it.

By Feb 14, Create a Team within your Team; a Group within your Group

Everyone and anyone from the participating groups is welcome to sign up – For the study itself, we ask that you have ready a team of 3-8 people.

HOW CREATE A TEAM:
FIRST: Ask a few people if they’d like to be part of your team (3-8 people). PLEASE CHECK THAT EACH member of your team has signed up INDIVIDUALLY, too – all participants need to sign up as individuals to participate.

team making tips – if you’re stuck, send an email out to your dept and simply ask “who wants to be on a team with me?” – you’ll be amazed at folks who have been hesitant who will be keen to connect

NEXT: Come up with a team name. We’ll email you instructions closer to Launch of Feb 14 of how to access a “team code” that will be connected with your team and team name. LAST: Share that code with the group. Each member enters that code into the Start screen on the app, and voila! Team members are connected in the app. We’ll email out the link for the App, too, closer to Feb 14.

HOW DO TEAMS WORK?– you choose how your team works, how the engagement is supported – we’ll offer suggestions, and seed some questions and self-experiments or group experiments you can explore and discuss. You decide though – how the team will work – and that process may evolve as the study continues.

Group Leader Board: Collective “how’s it going?” Also – from many Phase 1 participant requests – we’re going to have a Leader Board of groups – how many are making their planned minutes or more or less – not for competition – but just so you can see how folks are doing with building or maintaining movement minutes. Maybe a weekly target is too much too fast – or totally in line with peers and so on –

PAUSE for Life Happening Also from Phase 1 feedback we now have a big PAUSE button in the app: if life happens – hit pause – and then hit Jump Back In when you’re ready. This study is not a competition: it’s learning from YOU about what works, and what at work, needs to work better for your physical health, so you can work better, feel better too.

BONUSES: skills training; leadership opportunities

We’re also going to have Leadership workshops during the study around

• leadership
• knowledge gathering skills
• data capture
• other topics of interest to you around work processes – you ask, we’ll find experts.

The idea here is that as part of your participation – not only will you learn new skills on how to build your physical mental and social wellbeing – and get the time to practice in work – you’ll also have opportunities to build transferable workplace and leadership skills.

Sound good? Sign up from Feb 1 to Feb. 14

PATHS: START your movement minutes WHERE YOU ARE

You can join this study with ANY level of movement experience. Your teams can have any level of movement experiences. IT’s up to you!

We have recommended minimum movement minutes per week (starting first two weeks at 7mins / day) but if you have a practice already: you can take up to 35 from your work day every day. START WHERE YOU ARE!!

To help you start where you are, these are four paths we imagine you may wish to use in our app to track your experience – or you can Roll Your Own.

BUILDERS – Are you starting from scratch? Take a look at the Builders Path – the focus here is to build a foundation for your MOVEMENT. There are two versions of this path: ENDURANCE strength focus (like jogging, swimming, biking, rowing, dancing) – with some resistance strength for balance

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RESISTANCE strength focus (lifting yourself, lifting or swinging weights, some of both) – with some endurance strength for balance

We have a guided program for both paths that you can follow along – we have variants of the moves proposed to support wherever you’re at.

BUILD UP TIME AT YOUR PACE – Build up your movement minutes at your pace: we suggest: start at 7 minutes a day per week. We have a suggested pace to get to 35 minutes by week 10 – but you can increase or decrease that pace to suit where you’re at.

EXPLORERS – Not starting from scratch, but not quite at a formal daily movement practice yet. When you your moment it may be either perhaps more resistance than running. or more swimming than lifting. Great! Bring your practice. You choose if you’d like to complement that approach with every other day with lifting – if you’re a runner for example – or with cardio – if you’re a lifter. We have suggested approaches to explore your interests, and that you can dial in when you wish to suit you.

FLÂNEUR du PARKOUR If you’ve been alergic to exercise, consider the flâneur. A flâneur is an explorer, stroller, a people watcher – while constantly on the move, the word “exercise” does not enter the vocabulary – ambulation is a way to experience the rich variety of the world, not the end in itself.

Exercise may be even a vile term. Dandy – bring a spirit instead of strolling exploration – with a willingness to explore ways to elevate one’s heart rate while finding as many new sites as possible. Explore repetition of taking the same flight of stairs several times but seeing something different each time, by learning new ways to improve vision while moving. And Share your insights and discoveries with your team.

MIX AND MATCH If none of these profiles is you exactly, or you start in one place and find yourself reaching to another – that’s fine too! Our tools support that – and in fact it’s really valuable to see how these paths develop.

Key Questions we’re looking at in this study

• How, as a University, to best support YOU and your working groups to make this kind of activity “normal”
• how to transition work from overwork to healthy work
• *based on your experience from this pilot, how would you refine /re- design your work environment to support more movement more of the time to feel and perform better*

The small print:
more background research, about the phase 1 study, and ethics approval/participant info can be found at the Phase1 invitation, too

Who “we” are

This study is being run via the interdisciplinary LivingLab at the U of Southampton. It includes certified strength and conditioning specialist, nutrtionist and functional neurology trainer, m.c. schraefel (PI, wellthlab, ECS) with Richard Gomer (WAIS, ECS), Nick McGuire (Psychology), Marion Demossier (Ethnography), Fraser Sturt (Archaeology), Pauline Leonard (FSS), Ed Parkinson, (SSRG, WAIS, ECS). With thanks to Michael Shaw and Wendy Firlotte of iSolutions for content review.

This study is also supported by a grant from the University of Southampton’s Interdisciplinary Pump Priming Fund 2022, sponsored by the Associate VPs for Interdisciplinary Research, Rebecca Hoyle and John Holloway.

Interested? are you a staff member of FAH, FEPS, FSS, FoM, FELS, iSolutions, RIS,? Fantastic, sign up by Feb 14, and welcome aboard!