Posture cushions target employee productivity

New Zealand businesses such as Weta Workshop, St John’s, State Insurance, Fonterra and The Warehouse are using SitActive Posture Cushions to counterbalance staff time spent in sedentary positions, such as sitting at a desk.

"Sedentary jobs could become the next biggest wave of health lawsuits since the Occupational Overuse Syndrome and Repetitive Strain Injury lawsuits of the 1990s," wrote Emmanuel Turner, a lecturer in computer graphic design, on his blog http://eturnerx.blogspot.co.nz. 

“At $34.95, the SitActive Posture Cushion is a small price to pay for employers to ward against future health insurance claims based on excessive sitting,” says Steven Bennett, who developed SitActive Posture Cushions to ease his sore back, caused by a career change from a TV cameraman to acupuncture student, requiring sitting in lectures for long periods each day.”

The health consequences of “Too much sitting,” as opposed to “Too little exercise”, are identified in ‘inactivity physiology’ – a term first coined in 2004 to describe the risks associated with sedentary behaviour.

An Australian paper suggests a healthy lifestyle includes both reducing the time we spend sitting down, as well as increasing our exercise and it calls for public recommendations on reducing sitting time.

“We've become so sedentary that 30 minutes a day at the gym may not do enough to counteract the detrimental effects of eight, nine, or 10 hours of sitting,” says Genevieve Healy, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Cancer Prevention Research Centre of the University of Queensland in Australia.

“Healthy employees make for more productive employees,” says Bennett, who points to an Australian study (published in Human Resources magazine), which found the healthiest employees are nearly three times more productive at work than the least healthy.

“The financial incentive to keep employees exercising while they work is hard to overlook in this economic climate,” says Bennett. “Walking meetings are becoming popular and the SitActive Posture Cushion fits into a proactive human resource wellness programme.”

The SitActive Posture Cushion can be used to engage abdominals – the muscle groups requiring some of the toughest exercises to tone – as well as easing backache and improving posture.

It’s not just about a better body, the increased risk of many major diseases, such as cancer, atherosclerosis, heart disease, diabetes and bowel cancer, is also linked to sitting for long periods of time. With 24 people in New Zealand dying each week from bowel cancer, the benefits of keeping active can’t be under-estimated.

Further benefits of keeping active while you sit include improvements in:

– circulation 

– digestion

– cardiovascular and lymphatic systems

– musculoskeletal system

– bladder control and prevention/recovery from prolapse and postnatal rehabilitation.