This article summarizes the highlights of a presentation that Carrie is making on Thursday at the Applied Ergonomics conference in Orlando, Florida. (Come on down south to get the full story!)
At Taylor’d Ergo we’ve dedicated 2025 as the year of “proving that ergonomics works.” We’re trying to gather data about how effective all of our interventions are. We think our clients want to know! We know our prospective clients would welcome proof that their investment into our service will reap benefits.
To that end, we set out to understand the impact of micro-breaks. More specifically:
“Does a workplace activity program that encourages workers to take very short activity breaks have a positive effect on workers’ end-of-day comfort scores, perceived productivity, perceived work quality, and employee engagement?”
To answer that question, we first set out to create a practical workplace activity program, which I’ve written about previously and which is available in our store. (I also recorded a video about how to create a micro-break program.) We created a survey to collect effectiveness data following the rollout of the program. We wanted to know:
- Do employees feel more comfortable at work?
- Do they feel more productive?
- Are they able to produce better quality work?
- And do they like their jobs more?
We recruited a volunteer pilot organization. The company is a manufacturer, but they chose to run the pilot for office employees. All volunteers completed a baseline survey, committed to performing micro-break activities at least twice per day, and promised to complete the follow-up survey. The activity champion sent an email in the morning and in the afternoon, attaching one or two activities, and reminding people to do them at some point during the day. After 4 weeks, a follow-up survey was requested.
The champion passed on the following participant feedback:
- I’m enjoying Move it! I like the reminders to move.
- I’m loving this and so is my body. I think it’s wonderful, especially for anyone that sits all day.
- I think the reminder to complete the exercises is crucial because we immerse ourselves in our daily routine and forget the importance of moving our bodies.
- Many exercises were new to me.
- I’ve enjoyed the Move it! reminders. Without them, I know I’m not moving enough. The exercise variety is great.
- I’ve felt better the last month with more movement.
What did our stats show?
Well, let’s start by saying this was the first pilot, so we learned a lot about running a pilot. We did receive the requested minimum of 20 baseline surveys, but we only received 17 follow-up surveys, and only 13 of these could be paired up with the baseline survey data. This meant that we didn’t have the statistical power that we were hoping for, but we were able to see some non-significant trends that leave us hopeful for a second pilot.
We found:
- Participants took significantly more micro-breaks, from an average of 3/day to 4.7/day.
- Average “end-of-day” comfort scores improved from 5.5/10 to 6.3/10, where 10 is “perfectly comfortable” and 1 is “extreme discomfort.” (Not statistically significant, but in the right direction, at least.)
We asked questions in the baseline survey that we hoped would help us to capture the anticipated impact on quality, employee engagement, and productivity.
The average baseline end-of-day comfort score was 5.5/10. We asked employees how much their discomfort affected their productivity, quality, and engagement, with a rating of 1 meaning “not at all” and a rating of 10 meaning “it’s the most important factor.” Our line of thought was that if an employee rated their own productivity as 8/10 and told us that their discomfort was the most important factor, we might surmise that the employee believed that alleviating discomfort (through the activity program) might improve productivity to 10/10.
We learned that employees do believe that their discomfort affects work quality, engagement, and productivity. But unfortunately, the self-rated scores for these metrics did not change significantly after the pilot, despite slightly improved comfort scores.
What’s next?
We’re already starting our second pilot of the Move-it program, this time in a more industrial environment. The client plans to post the activities at a location that everyone passes, so they’ll be reminded as they come and go from the production area.
The survey in this environment needs to be paper instead of electronic because these workers don’t have access to electronic devices, so our ergonomist will distribute and collect them; this will ensure anonymity and should also hopefully improve our response rate. If we don’t get matched sets of baseline and follow-up data, we’ll be able to chase down the non-responders.
We’ve created “activity champion” training, which we expect will significantly improve the reception of the program. A representative from each area of the facility will participate in a 2-hour hands-on workshop that explains and quantifies how each type of activity works. When we piloted the training with our own team, we were all fascinated by how easily and clearly we could demonstrate the impacts of strength, flexibility, mobility, visual fatigue, and balance.
We’ll continue to offer the baseline/follow-up surveys as part of the package, because we think our clients want to understand the impact of the program at their workplaces. If you’re interested, we’re still offering the package and training at our introductory price here.