Ideas > Organizational Level: How Your Organization Can Help Everyone to Be Active

• Make sure that your building’s stairwells are clean, attractive and safe, and post signs encouraging employees to use the stairs.

• Establish a wellness newsletter or intranet.

• Encourage employees to do the Yoga @ Your Desk or Stretch @ Your Desk videos on this website.

• Promote the Activity Tracker and encourage employees to track their physical activity every week.

• Be creative, and make the most of the workspace you have. For example, mark off a safe walking path inside or around the building. You might also set up a training circuit, highlighting features of the worksite such as stairs.

• Offer physical activity opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time workers.

• For workers in remote or satellite offices, offer equal access to key initiatives via the intranet. Adapt challenges to suit their environment and take advantage of local facilities and resources.

• Make physical activity available to employees with special needs. Adapt information and activities for any staff who are visually impaired or physically disabled as well as for people who speak English as a second language.

• Educate employees about physical activity using information from reputable sources such as the Alberta Centre for Active Living.

• Offer facilities that invite onsite physical activity. Possibilities include bike racks, an exercise room, change rooms with lockers and showers, and safe and attractive grounds for walking.

• Hold walking meetings.

• Encourage employees to walk to co-workers’ offices instead of e-mailing or phoning.

• Set up a stretching room. This low-cost initiative requires only a room, stretching mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Put up posters that show stretches and exercises.

• Provide incentives such as shoe bags, ball caps, T-shirts or water bottles to reward staff participation.

• Loan out pedometers for three months, so that employees can find out how many steps they usually take and how much activity they need to add to get basic health benefits.

• Make space for employees to plant and maintain a flowerbed or garden at the workplace. Use any resulting produce for meetings and potluck lunches or donate it to charity.

• Plan a workplace health fair.

• Hire a certified fitness specialist to design and manage an onsite fitness facility.

• Supply employees with active wear that shows off the company logo.

Find out More

• Alberta Centre for Active Living. This website offers extensive information about all aspects of physical activity. For example, visit the Publications section for Quick Facts on various aspects of physical activity. See also the centre’s Pedometer Information Sheet or Feuille de renseignements sur le podomètre.

• Provincial Fitness Unit: This organization can give you information about fitness certification for fitness professionals.

• Stairway to Health:

  • Facts Sheets and Resources.
  • Concerns of Building Managers
  • Making stairwells clean and safe.