Promoting Physically Active Working Days to Sedentary Workers - Handbook For Sport Students

This thesis was conducted to oppose the prevailing trend of increased inactivity amongst people, especially those with sedentary occupations. The purpose of the functional thesis was to produce a handbook for sport students working for the commissioning party, coaching clients with sedentary occupations. It was conducted as an assignment for Myötätuuli Learning Clinic offering well-being and sport services for people of all ages in Kajaani. The aims of the thesis were 1) from the commissioning party’s point of view, to create a new tool for them to support the students working for Myötätuuli in order to perform their tasks more efficiently; 2) from the authors’ point of view, to gain knowledge and practical experience in their field of study and 3) from the society and working life’s point of view, to create awareness about the benefits of physical activity and to promote an active lifestyle into workplaces. The three developmental tasks for the thesis were: how to motivate people to be more physically active at their workplaces, what kind of exercises and functions work best when being implemented at the workplace during working hours, and which form of information in a handbook works best to inform and motivates people towards more physically active behavior. The thesis was carried out during fall 2017 and spring 2018, and it contained six phases based on the product development process by Ojasalo et al. (2014). The phases were: recognizing the development target, background research, developmental tasks, production plan, implementation, and assessment. As a support operation for the development of the product, and the assessment of the handbook, a practical testing period with the authors as instructors and a pilot group of nine clients took place during two weeks in April 2018. The finalizing of the end product referred to the feedback collected from the practical testing period through qualitative research in the form of interviews from the participants, the commissioning party, and practical observa-tions made by the authors during the period. The testing period generated a lot of positive feedback, but there were also ideas for improvements. The adjustments were made to the handbook accordingly. As a result, the information collected to the handbook is guidance for good practices to use when carrying out tasks with clients, motivational tips and useful information to share with clients as well as instructions for break exercises, which can be utilized as such and performed in an office environment. The final version of the handbook was handed in for the commissioning party as an electronic copy (PDF-file) in the beginning of May 2018