Innovation project 2016 Sitting is killing

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The advice
At first, it is important to analyse per company which parts of this advice are achievable and
effective. When you want to apply this advice on a specific company, first an advisor should make an
analysis applied on this specific company.
Based on an extensive literature-study, we have drawn the following conclusions.
Things your innovation should imply:
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Adaption to individual preferences or traits. When the innovation is directed to a large

population, you will miss your purpose for everyone. It just does not fit completely to an
individual person. For example, you can let all the employees have an intake-conversation.
You can make a goal, together with the employee. It is important to let the idea of the goal
come from the person himself. However, there should be enough challenge in this goal.
The individual challenges should be on the same personal level. You can determine
everyones personal level in an above-mentioned intake-conversation. There is, for example,
a huge difference in an achievable goal between an marathoner and person who is obese.
Multiple short moments of activity (intensity does not matter) are more effective than one
long, intensive moment. (figure 4)
Standing is healthier than sitting, so if there is a possibility to change sitting into standing,
you should apply it.
There are two types of influence: conscious and unconscious. Influence should happen
unconsciously to reach a larger population. Conscious change of behavior requires more
energy than unconscious change of behavior. Most people spend the less energy as possible,
during the day, so unconscious behavior would probably fit more people.
Change has to be as small as possible
Competition in combination with consensus (relatives) is very effective.
The change has to become a part of your daily routine; use specific habits to change
behavior, something they cannot escape from, for example using the stairs instead of the
elevator.

Things your innovation should not imply:

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Rewarding will only have effect on short time. When you stop rewarding, you lower the
motivation of the employee. Thus: the chance to get an award is better than the sureness of
getting an award.
Do not give the employee too much background information. It will not deteriorate his
behavior, however it will also not improve his behavior. On the other hand, it does have
effect to tell the employers some background information, so it is clear where they spend
their money on.
Timing: some moments are better for a change than others. When people already have to
change, it is easier to change a little bit extra than changing twice.
Do not lose track of people who do not reach their targets. They can get demotivated by the
fact that other people reach their goals, and they do not seem to achieve anything. You can
get in touch with them and talk about a more achievable goal.

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-

Do not let people compare themselves with others above them, but with people a bit
below them.

These are three elements that are important to change behaviour. You should not combine
consensus, scarcity and authority. It is not more effective and sometimes it will decrease the
effectiveness.
1. Consensus: people are more tend to do more things, when they know many other people
also did it. For example: show how many people have been using/doing the activity or
application
2. Scarcity: making things appear exclusive or rare.
3. Authority: let a respectable figure or leader tell them why it is important to change
behaviour. This element is more effective with a population of lower socio-economic
class.

Concrete ideas
We have thought about two concrete ideas in which the things described above are implemented: a
conscious scenario and an unconscious scenario.

Conscious
In case there is a company with employees who all have a high economic status, competition
between different departments could be very successful. Everyone has a personal goal and all the
personal goals together form the ranking of a department. Conversations with employees, done by
an advisor, to form individual goals. These conversations make sure that the goals are in ratio and
that every employee really can achieve his or her goal. An individual goal could be walking 500 steps
a day or taking the stairs instead of the elevator - they must be related to movement, of course.
Competition between departments is effective because of two reasons: employees work together to
achieve a goal and stimulate each other, and the competition element also is a stimulation. Authority
will not be very successful, because the employees are high educated and they will be less influenced
by an authority. Scarcity could be a very effective mechanism to influence the employees. Using the
sentence Only one department can get this achievement, go for it! stimulates the department to
work and move more. Using another mechanism (for example consensus) will not be more effective
or even less effective. So the sentence Only one department can get this achievement and hundred
departments of other business have reach it, too will not work.
The fact that failing with achieving your personal goal affects the deparment ranking, also is a
stimulation to work for you goal. Other people will be disadvantaged and that often is not what the
employee wants.
The whole system with personal goals and rankings between departments could be integrated in a
mobile application, a computer programme or a website. It is important that the employee easily can
find the achievements, goals, rankings et cetera.

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Adding an ranking board in the staff room also is an option (in addition to the application,
programme or website). Employees can talk about the ranking during lunch, which makes it more a
group thing. This stimulates too.
Disadvantages are that this is a very conscious process, which is not the most effective way of
changing movement. Nevertheless, we think it is a very good concept because it has a very good
combination of several elements. The competition element could also be negative, because
employees could be jealous at other employees who achieve more or better goals. Employees could
be angry at each other when some employees do not achieve their goals. Employees also could go
for the challenge and competition that they do not focus on work as they did before. The employer
has to be aware of these disadvantages, but we think that the benefits are way higher than the
disadvantages.
We have implemented all these ideas into an application, which will look like this (be aware of the
fact that this purely is an example and this also could be a website or something else):

Figure 1: homepage.

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This is an example of a reproduction of the employees personal goals:

Figure 2 Personal goals.

This is an example of the menu of this application:

Figure 3 The menu.

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Unconscious
Putting footsteps or lines which lead to the stairs is a very effective way of influencing the movement
of people in an unconscious way. These footsteps or lines make that people are more tended to
follow these footsteps or lines to the stairs. The fact that it is unconscious, makes that this idea will
not take a lot of energy from people. This idea is very effective to change the habits of people and so
the long-term behaviour, because it is an unconscious process. In order to change the movement
behaviour of people, the habits have to change and so this idea will work out.
Consensus has a very important place in this example, because people will follow when some people
are taking the stairs. Using consensus excludes the usage of authority or scarcity because the
combination of more mechanisms is not effective.
This idea contains a very little alteration, which makes it having more chance to be successful.

Figure 4i

Peter-Jan Mol. Wetenschap en langdurig zitten. Internet site NISB Nederlands Instituut voor Sport & Bewegen.
Available through: http://www.nisb.nl/weten/kennisgebieden/gezonde-werkplek/sedentaireleefstijl/wetenschap-en-langdurig-zitten.html. Consulted on: 24th May 2016.