Tailored exercise ensures a healthier workforce

People who exercise at or after work will improve their health. Employers should invest more in their employees, and a new tool can offer employees a free research-based exercise programme adapted to their everyday working life.

Many people are too sedentary at work. This is damaging to health if not compensated for with extra physical activity (1). Meanwhile, studies have demonstrated that people with high occupational physical activity, often with low intensity and monotonous activities, have poor health (2). For example, the proportion of Swedish employees with low physical fitness increased from 26 % to 46 % in the period 1995–2017 (3).

The prevention of occupational health damage benefits employees, employers and society as a whole. In Norway, loss of productivity due to musculoskeletal disease was estimated to be NOK 54 billion in 2013. On top of this, there are the disability and healthcare costs (4). Physical activity can prevent and treat this, as well as more than 30 other conditions (5), and conservative estimates demonstrate a potential annual welfare gain in Norway of 400,000 quality-adjusted life years if the population became more physically active (6).