For two years in a row, Ball had brought in someone from NCI to hold a half-day session. “They train a lot of athletes and focus on how to manage your energy,” Ball explained. “When you manage your energy, you manage your productivity. It’s good for athletes and workers.”

But one half-day session per year wasn’t going to be enough to combat the sedentary nature of the team’s work, which involves a lot of time at a desk and on the phone. Plus, the team works remotely. No commute means no activity’s required to get to the job and the kitchen’s always open. “One of the reasons people don’t want to have a home office is because of the weight gain. Food’s always there!” Ball commented.

Even though Sodexo offers a company wellness program, Ball was looking for something more customized to her team’s needs. Sanders’ announcement provided the perfect opportunity. The two agreed to have Sanders lead a break on weekly calls.

Initially, Sanders verbally led the breaks. Now the team’s fully in the 21st century, using a webcam to provide easier-to-follow and more detailed instructions. “Since we started using the webcam, more people are involved,” Sanders observed.

The call-related work breaks were just the beginning. Once these became routine, individuals started personalizing their approach. “One person sets a clock every hour so she’ll walk or just get up and move about. Some people walk during other calls. Nobody has gotten a treadmill desk,” Ball commented. But what they did get was a Fitbit. Recently, Ball bought all 50 team members a Fitbit activity tracker and established a Sodexo Talent Acquisition Community. “We tie a monthly incentive to the number of steps taken. Anyone who has an average of 10,000 steps per day gets two entries in the monthly contest. If you average 6500 steps, you get one entry. Winners have their choice of a Fitbit Aria scale or a $100 Sports Authority certificate.”

Building activity into the day simply makes getting exercise easier. “It’s not finding the hour block of time. It’s doing it constantly throughout the day,” Ball remarked. “The time we take out, it’s going to pay dividends—more focus, more productivity, better health.”

Ball, Sanders and the entire Sodexo team have found an additional benefit beyond the obvious health benefits: greater camaraderie. “I continue messaging people throughout the day,” Sanders shared. “Things like ‘Why aren’t you standing up right now?!’ In return, we have a running joke during the breaks I lead. ‘What’s with the hair?!’”

The post Sodexo Talent Acquisition Team Acquires Fitness by Webcam appeared first on Hotseat.

The Games for Health Conference is now in its ninth year. The lineup of speakers includes researchers and game developers from tech startups to more mature organizations. This year, the conference focus has expanded to include sections on global health, enterprise wellness, business development and market briefings.

Hope to see you there!

Review the schedule and register.

The post Hotseat Presenting at 2013 Games for Health Conference appeared first on Hotseat.

In a roundup of new technology available to support HR’s objectives, Seals included Hotseat, along with other technologies focused on talent management, including recognition, scheduling, and recruitment.

Read the article.

The post Mercer Recognizes Hotseat at WorldatWork Conference appeared first on Hotseat.

That’s the consensus from nearly 4,000 employees polled by CareerBuilder between February and March 2013.

These employees had no difficulty recognizing they were carrying more pounds than they’d like. More than half said they were overweight, and 41% say it’s their job’s fault. Specifically, their chair is to blame. “Sitting at my desk most of the day” is the primary cause of weight gain, followed by stress-related eating, buying lunch instead of brownbagging it, the office candy jar, and workplace celebrations.

CareerBuilder’s survey results correspond to a growing body of research on “sitting disease.” Not only is sitting linked to weight gain, it’s also linked to an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer.

As these employees discovered, hitting the gym isn’t enough to undo the damage, on the scale or elsewhere. Three in five employees report working out on a regular basis, including 45% who hit the gym at least three times a week—mostly after work, but some beforehand. Only a handful exercise during lunchtime.

Employees often skip the noontime workout to avoid the change-sweat-shower routine, or because of the time involved. They may also prefer to keep their workouts private. That doesn’t mean they can’t exercise at lunch or throughout the day. CareerBuilder’s Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources, recommends building in walks to help keep the weight down. Employees can also:

• Initiate walking meetings
• Grab a spot on the waiting list for a treadmill desk
• Take the long route to the bathroom, or add a side stair trip on the way there or back
• Rewire their printer to a printer farther away
• Build a few short walks or other breaks into their day
• Create an activity break group to take scheduled breaks with throughout the day
• Squeeze a 7-minute workout into their day
• Steal creative break ideas from other companies
• Launch a lunchtime dance party
• Use our list of 25 activity breaks
• Follow Hotseat on Twitter and join others taking a #2minbreak

Tell Us: Do you exercise at work? What works for you?

Image: Someecards

The post CareerBuilder Survey: Our Jobs Are Making Us Fat appeared first on Hotseat.

“Rather than just measuring the epic around-the-block exercise walks I had begun to take, it [the Fitbit] measured all my walking, including the incidental steps I took while, say, grocery shopping or getting the mail.

“The thing with walking, though, is that it really does take a lot of time. When I ran, I could whip through five miles in forty-five minutes, but walking the same distance would take forever.

“Voila, the treadmill desk. I’m not sure where or how I first heard about the contraption, but I found out that several people I knew had one. In fact, I learned two of my Fitbit friends whose step counts were astronomical were working at treadmill desks, so suddenly those numbers made sense.”

Orlean’s journey to walking while working is part of a growing trend. The numbers don’t lie. Steelcase, the maker of one of the more expensive treadmill desk options, has seen a fivefold increase in its sales over the past five years. Other makers have seen growth ranging from four- to tenfold.

Consumers are driving some of the increase in sales, but most is driven by companies, insurers, and states purchasing treadmill desks for their workers. In 2012,  Forbes ranked a treadmill desk one of the best workplace luxuries.

The appeal is obvious. The Mayo Clinic’s Dr. James Levine, father of the treadmill desk and the term “sitting disease,” shares that the treadmill desk was how he solved the problem of getting more activity into busy days. “You have to convert chair time to walking time.”

Orlean’s piece on treadmill desks, “The Walking Alive,” runs in The New Yorker’s May 20, 2013 issue. Read an excerpt from the article.

The post Treadmill Desks: Swap Chair Time for Walking Time appeared first on Hotseat.

Working with clients who are “high-performing professionals from a variety of industries…men and women who face incessant demands on their time,” Brett and Chris recognized the need for a workout that’s both fast and effective. In response, they designed a high-intensity circuit training (HICT) made up of 12 exercises. These exercises combine aerobic and resistance training and can be performed anywhere with no equipment other than a chair. (Kind of like Hotseat, whose library of 40+ activities includes the same exercises in this workout and many more.)

The demanding circuit is intentional in its design and structure. Performing the circuit requires completing the exercises in order, performing 15 to 20 repetitions of each and taking no more than a 15-second recovery in between. The order allows you to work one muscle group and then let that same muscle group rest while you work out the next one. This staging helps to maintain stamina and, ultimately, performance. The circuit’s also designed to work out all the major muscle groups and to be scaled up or dialed down in intensity. People can perform fewer reps and increase their rest time if they’re just getting started. (Taking more than a 30-second rest reduces the benefits of this training.) Those looking for a longer workout can perform the circuit multiple times.

A lot of science went into this workout so a lot of time doesn’t. Ready to work out?

The 7-Minute Workout

A reader shared the debate about this workout happening over on the NY Times Well blog.

The post 7-Minute, Evidence-Based Workout appeared first on Hotseat.

The Locus Workstation

Consider Focal Upright, the latest endeavor of Martin Keen, the founder and former owner of Keen, Inc., a footwear company. Martin’s outgrown the shoe, but not the desire to apply his design sense and his passion for improving lives to products for better living. For the past 12 years he’s been perfecting this workstation that combines a slanted seat with a slanted desk. Martin describes what you do on the Locus Seat as “perching,” and he’s found it to be the answer to getting and keeping his design juices flowing.

No, Sweat! Workstation

Another new entry is No, Sweat!, a three-piece furniture set that can be turned into exercise equipment. Created by Vancouver-based designer Darryl Agawin, the furniture is built from equipment you might recognize as an exercise step or plyometric box. Standing nearby are a balance board, weight bar, skip rope, and kettle bell. No, Sweat! seems designed for small spaces and for whenever the urge to exercise hits you.

Sporthocker: Sit, Stand, Jump

Then there’s the Sporthocker, which is not new and not for the faint of heart. It’s a seat, it’s a skateboard, it’s a test of your agility and creativity.

Which suits your style?

The post Office Furniture That Makes You Work. Out. appeared first on Hotseat.

That means we don’t walk for 30 minutes each day, we don’t do something more vigorous for 75 minutes total each week, and we don’t do the recommended push-ups and sit-ups at least twice a week. About 50% of adults reach the aerobic activity goals and 30% do the push-ups and sit-ups. Put them together, however, and only 20% of American adults meet these combined guidelines.

It could be our overall responsibilities are getting in the way. A study from Ohio State University’s College of Public Health found we shortchange our workouts if we’re responsible for dinner too. Ten minutes needed to prep dinner are ten minutes cut from a workout. Interestingly, things are worse for childless men. They trade off activities completely, so that a day requiring their being behind the stove means a day not behind a barbell at all.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index looks at perhaps another factor. Since 2009, they’ve tracked exercise activity year over year. This year they saw a downward trend compared to 2012 (but equal to 2011). According to Gallup, one possible reason could be the warmer weather conditions we experienced in 2012.

This sort of information helps us dissect at least some of what keeps us from getting out there and doing it. It also helps us figure out solutions, like fitting exercise into life’s margins—exercising at work and working while exercising. Check out our earlier post on 5 creative ways companies are doing just this.

The post We Don’t Exercise Enough (Shocked?) appeared first on Hotseat.

For a long time, employee wellness programs solely focused on the recommended 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity we need each week. We still need that. But thanks to the abundance of research on the ill effects of uninterrupted sitting, employers are supplementing their broader fitness programs with opportunities to just get up and move.

I rounded up examples for a presentation at WorldatWork’s 2013 Total Rewards Conference. Here are only five of the many techniques companies are using:

1. Web Camera Breaks: Ninety telecommuting Sodexo employees take a 10-minute activity break each week with a staffer who’s also a fitness instructor. Patricia Freshwater, Sodexo’s senior communications manager, told me “Rita’s sessions are the opening agenda item for our weekly team call.” Sodexo’s class mirrors a growing interest in webcam fitness.

2. PA System Bong: Intel employees are reminded to get up and move twice a day by “The Intel Bong.”

3. Home-grown Exercise Classes: Overit Media hosts “OverFit,” an hourly two-minute exercise break facilitated by an employee.  The D.C. Department of Health line dances twice a day. (Bet they’d like our “Shake Your Groove Thing” challenge!)

4. Designed Programs: Sellen Construction Company partnered with ErgoFit to design exercises and then train employees as shift-break facilitators. Datalogix in Boston goes hard-core with CrossFit classes in its Boston office.

5. Seeding the Environment: Google’s NY office lends Razor scooters to employees to help them get about, Novo Nordisk designed a one-mile scenic path, and numerous companies encourage employees to use the stairs or to play foosball, ping pong, and other games—even take the slides.

While we still don’t know how long is too long to sit or how frequent or how long our activity breaks should be, we can conclusively say we must get up.

These companies found methods that suit their environments and their cultures. What methods are you trying where you work?

The post Employers Take Different Paths To Get Employees Stepping appeared first on Hotseat.

You know what? We didn’t. But we’re still beaming. That’s because we were one of five selected as an example of excellence in the Games (Handheld Devices) category. We stood up there with Webby Award winner Draw a Stickman Epic and Webby People’s Voice Award Winner Cut the Rope. And we rose above 11 other honorees. That’s top choice.

We thank The Webbys for their recognition and you for your vote!

Review the winners gallery.

The post The Webbys: We Lost! We Won! appeared first on Hotseat.