How a mid-day walk can benefit your workday
How to carve out time for a walk during work hours
Busy work days can leave people with little time to do anything personal like making a phone call, grabbing a healthy lunch, or taking a walk simply to get away from the desk. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise in standing desk options and various desk workouts to keep the blood flowing. And, with the shift from working in an office to working from home, the hours and days can start to blur together and leave people forgetting to tap into wellness throughout their workday.
Work culture can be overbearing in rules and regulations with booked calendars and feeling like the clock is always ticking. It is important to remember to carve out time during the work day to step away from it all and catch a breath of fresh air. By putting time on your calendar to step away from the desk, booking meetings around that time. And, if it’s a day that you don’t feel like you can get away from, it’s your event to cancel.
If a mid-day walk isn’t an option or will just further complicate the day, plan to book a nice walk once home from the long day. Better yet, if living within walking distance of work, plan certain days to walk to and from work.
Benefits of walking
Walking is one of the best and most convenient exercises there is. Plus, it never goes out of style and doesn’t cost anything to do. Age doesn’t matter, but physical ability can come into play. 30 minutes of walking can get the blood flowing, clear the mind, increase serotonin levels, relieve stress, and create a distance between yourself and work, even if for a couple of minutes. It can replace your afternoon coffee and not make you crash or stay up too late after work.
Joining a gym or at-home exercises are great, but not as easy to do during the workday for most people. Just about anyone can take a walk at any time of the day, giving the body the daily exercise it needs.
How employers can encourage walking for employees
Employers can help encourage employees to step away from their desk by enforcing lunch hours to be taken elsewhere (even if somewhere else on the same floor or building). Giving employees a full hour for lunch can give them time to eat, walk, and catch up on personal items so as to devote their desk time to the work that needs to be done.
Health and wellness programs are a great way to incentivize employees and encourage healthy behavior. For example, management could purchase step trackers for all people to use their smartphones to calculate the amount of walking done over a certain period of time. The employees with the most steps can win awards or prizes. This creates a sense of comradery, positive competition, and healthy habits while at the office.
E3 Consulting can help create wellness programs to encourage healthy habits in the workplace, like taking a lunch hour walk
We recognize the impact that burnout culture is having on both employees and employers. We want to work with you to strategize ways to improve the health and habits of everyone who works for your company.
