The Effect of active breaks for wellbeing at work

Abstract

In this master’s thesis the objective was to research if active breaks during workday have an impact on individual’s wellbeing at work and if so, what are the detected changes. The research study was made for a large company working in the IT field; the participants worked in different positions in the company.

The first week of the study the participants were guided to work as usual and have the first health assessment done by attaching Firstbeat device into their chest for three days. The first assessment was done to gather data from initial condition to later compare results to. Then the participants were guided to take two active breaks during workdays. In this case, active break meant a 15-minute moderate walk. On the second week of active breaks, Firstbeat assessment was then repeated. The participants also filled out short journal as well as a written interview after the research period. All the numerical data was formed into Firstbeat individual reports as well as group reports.

For this research, the Firstbeat generated data was input to usable form to compile statistics. The comparisons were made between the assessment periods in three main categories: stress and recovery, sleep, and physical activity. The results were promising. The changes especially in the category of physical activity were significant – also improvement of sleep quality and slight improvement of stress and recovery balance was detected.

As a conclusion, the benefit of active breaks came distinct. Living an active lifestyle is one of the corner stones in our overall wellbeing an seeing extensive increase especially in this category is assuring that in the long run the active breaks would benefit other categories even more as well.