Five ways to keep homeworkers active

Sitting down for extended periods of time is incredibly bad for our health but, now many of us are working from home or at the very least moving about much less than we normally do, it seems hard to avoid.

To help with this, over the coming weeks as part of our Working from Home series in partnership with Fitbit we’ll be looking at a range of exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and general wellbeing activities to keep your employees and users feeling fresh and energised as they work.

To get us started, here’s 5 easy ways to keep your staff and users moving during while working from home:

 

Turn your kettle into a personal trainer

The UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines report recommends that you should break up long periods of sitting with just one or two minutes of activity. So, while the kettle’s boiling for your coffee or tea break, do star jumps, planks, press-ups etc. to elevate your heart rate.

 

Talk the walk!

If you’re on the phone talking to your colleagues, leave the laptop behind and walk up and down the hall (or stairs if you have them) as a great way to get a few extra steps in. If you have a Fitbit, you could even challenge your friends to an indoor step challenge.

 

 

Create a standing desk

You burn more calories when standing, so try moving your laptop onto the kitchen side (you may need the help of a few books depending on how tall you are) for a new work setup.

 

Make the time to move

Physical activity can boost self-esteem, mood, sleep quality and energy – something a lot of us need at the moment – so make sure you include time in your working day, whether that’s a session before, after or even during lunchtime. Ideally, aim for 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week and if you have a Fitbit Charge 4, your device can track all that automatically for you with its new Active Zone Minutes function.

 

Try something new

Whether you’re used to jogging with friends, heading to the gym or kicking a ball about with the gang, now’s the time to experiment with new forms of exercise and challenge yourself. With Fitbit Premium, you can access our Dynamic Workout Library packed full of thousands of yoga lessons, dance classes, abs workouts, HIIT sessions and more.

 

Find out more

As Fitbit Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.

 

 

References

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-getting-every-adult-active-every-day/health-matters-getting-every-adult-active-every-day

https://www.posturite.co.uk/help-advice/useful-resources/learning-guides/what-is-ergonomics

Reopening the workplace after COVID-19: A checklist for businesses

As the UK and other countries and cities start to ease lockdown restrictions, this handy checklist for reopening business workplaces can help you jumpstart safe and efficient returns to work, and kick-starting of business.

You and your users have been quarantined in your homes for the past few days weeks months, and now
authorities are looking to lift restrictions and open up. You may be thinking, “We’ll be back soon, and I can get out of this house!” The problem is, if you just pick up and go, and don’t prepare for having people back in the workplace, you may run into issues that could have been easily avoided. So now is the time to prepare.

This checklist is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it can help provide guidance as you look to reopen. It’s
organised into four sections:

  • People
  • Workplace
  • Technology
  • Your Customers

Every company’s situation is of course unique, but evaluating your plan with these components in mind can help you get organised and anticipate obstacles that may stand in the way.

Extra security layers for collaboration tools

As you can read in the Technology section of the checklist, many users have been using Microsoft Teams for collaborating with colleagues during the lockdown period. Yet one in three users experience data loss in cloud applications like Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite.

With more and more businesses now using the Microsoft Office 365 suite of tools, it’s more and more vital to ensure that your data is adequately backed up to avoid accidental loss, or the risk of being held to ransom for your own data.

We’ve pulled together a list of 4 reasons to add an additional layer such as Datto SaaS protection to your organisation’s data, and this video outlines Datto’s SaaS protection services in a little more detail.

Find out more

You can read more about Datto SaaS data protection in this article.

As Datto Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.

Datto

Help during the COVID-19 crisis

The expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This covers all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more. Click here for our central COVID-19 resource hub.