The Prestige Blog

Sitting Can Be Good for the Circulatory System

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:13:57 -0800

What We Know:

Physical inactivity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and it is becoming increasingly prevalent. It ranks similarly to cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol as contributors to heart ailments. When a person’s activity level declines, the rate of heart disease increases. What’s more, less active, less-fit persons have a 30 to 50 percent greater risk of developing high blood pressure (New York State Department of Health, 2008). Only 30.9 percent of U.S. adults report engaging in leisure-time physical activity (American Heart Association, 2008).

Heart rate is increasingly considered an independent risk factor of cardiovascular disease (Ferrari et al., 2005), meaning it has a significant contribution—among established risk factors—to an outcome like cardiovascular disease. Based on a study of 25,000 patients, resting heart rate was shown to be an independent risk predictor of cardiovascular mortality's (Diaz et al., 2005). A reduction in heart rate decreases the work of the heart; therefore, it decreases oxygen demand and energy needs of the heart while simultaneously resulting in an increase in coronary blood flow. That is, as resting heart rate decreases, the risk of death from cardiovascular disease decreases.

In addition to lowering risk, a decrease in heart rate can improve cognition. When people feel better, they are less distracted by their physical state, which can lead to better performance. A relationship between heart rate and cognition was suggested by research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, which revealed that a deceleration in heart rate during the anticipatory period preceding a task was associated with improved cognitive performance (McCraty et al., 2006). And in the 1980s, researchers learned that a decreased heart rate allows the brain to receive sensory information more often, leading to better cognitive performance (McCraty et al., 2006).

Therefore

People who don’t engage in regular physical activity, and who spend a lot of time sitting, are already at risk for cardiovascular disease. If they can lower their heart rate, they can reduce their risk (Freedman, 2008). It’s not only a health-positive factor, meaning that lowering the heart rate can improve one’s health, but also a benefit to one’s ability to think, since reduced heart rate is associated with improved cognitive performance.

Design Problem:

Work—and play—have changed dramatically since the early 1990s as technology has come to dominate people’s lifestyles. People tend to sit too long without moving. In fact, many chairs restrict the body’s movement. Ultimately the sitter’s internal systems can be affected. One approach to promoting movement in a work chair would be to design one with a dynamic seat and backrest. Doing so would require a surface that automatically conforms to a sitter’s micro-movements and distributes weight evenly. This would allow the seat to take on the greater burden of supporting more weight while providing stability. It would also reduce seated pressure and increase blood circulation to improve oxygen flow and decrease heart rate.

Another design aspect that would promote movement is the shape of the backrest. A work chair with an upwardly tapered backrest would provide more flexibility to encourage torso movement and allow the sitter’s arms to swing freely. Free to move, the sitter’s chest cavity would open up more than in a chair with a conventional wide backrest allows. As a result, lungs which are not constructed could enable a sitter to take deeper breaths, thus requiring fewer breaths per minute. Taken together, these features would promote movement while seated. And movement, as research has shown, is the key to good health. It keeps blood circulating and oxygen entering the lungs to feed the brain so people can think better.

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Hang On Loosely: The Common Sense of Retention

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:38:25 -0800

Easy come, easy go.

For years companies accepted employee turnover as part of the cost of doing business. Some companies, lulled into complacency by a sleepy economy, a surplus of workers, and the belief that they can hire a replacement at a lower salary, still do. Experts predict that as the economy continues to strengthen those companies are in for a rude awakening. Workers, weary of having to do more with less and irritated by the lack of growth opportunities in their current job situations, are quietly networking over lunch or at their kids’ soccer games looking for something better. Estimates for just how many are considering changing jobs range from 30 to 86 percent1, which means it could be anything from seriously disruptive to devastating for some companies.

The surplus of workers that companies have come to rely on in the last few years is temporary at best. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting a labor shortage of six million workers by 2008; it is also projecting that much of the shortfall will involve professional and service occupations, which will increase the fastest and add the most jobs.2 The labor shortage will continue to increase until sometime between 2015 and 2025, when there will be between 10 million and 16 million fewer workers than there are jobs.3 Charles Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development, a group of business and education leaders that conducts policy research in Washington, told the New York Times, “This is a sleeper issue. We do have a demographic time bomb.”

And what about the cost of replacing workers? To drive home the reality of that cost, Beverly Kaye, coauthor with Sharon Jordan-Evans of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay, tells a true story about John, an outstanding engineer at “XYZ Company” who asked for a 15 percent raise (about $15,000). His manager refused, and John went to work for a competitor for 30 percent more than he had been making. To find a replacement of equal caliber, XYZ hired a headhunter for $40,000 and spent $5,000 flying candidates in for interviews. It then wooed its top candidate by offering a $10,000 signing bonus, a $25,000 moving allowance, and a salary that was 25 percent higher than John’s. In order to keep John’s engineering friends, who had heard about how much more he was making at his new company, the company gave them each 15 percent raises. The cost of replacing John now hovered around $100,000. But then, because of John’s expertise, the new company won a multi-billion dollar contract that would have gone to XYZ.

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Office Environments - The North American Perspective

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:58:58 -0700

Change is rampant in North American enterprises—technological, social, demographic, economic, and political change at both global and local levels. Business realities are more tumultuous than ever before. Today’s organizations are undergoing a fundamental transformation in the way they think about, organize, and carry out work in a global competitive economy. This movement is characterized by a change from large, hierarchical, command-and-control organizations to smaller, more fluid, team-oriented enterprises with greater participation from an empowered work force.

Providing work environments that help people and organizations realize their potential requires an understanding of these changes— of the relationships between external forces, individual and group needs, organizational structures and processes, and the physical environment—and of how these relationships affect business results.

Understanding office environments: A framework

Many people think of office environments simply as physical settings, something quite separate from the people, their work activities, and organizational structures. However, a holistic view of the office domain—considering people, production structures and processes, and place together—provides a better approach for understanding and responding effectively to dynamic problems in the workplace.

In the office environment, people, production, and place come together in continually changing patterned relationships. Ultimately, however, all three must be understood together and orchestrated as a whole in order to achieve effective organizational results, such as customer satisfaction and profitability. In today’s office environment, dealing with change is a major challenge. Because the core elements (people, production, and place) have an impact on key outcomes such as productivity, satisfaction, safety, and long-term effectiveness, a holistic understanding of the office environment can support positive changes and enhance an organization’s chance of success.

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