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It's time to start changing the game: A 12-week workplace team sport intervention study
journal contribution
posted on 2017-09-04, 08:41 authored by Andrew J. Brinkley, Hilary McDermottHilary McDermott, Rachel Grenfell-Essam, Fehmidah MunirFehmidah MunirBackground A 12-week multi-team sport programme was provided to employees of a large services organisation and conducted in workplaces. This programme was used to investigate the short-term effect of regular sports team participation on individual employee and organisational health. Methods A large services organisation participated in this study. Two regional worksites of office workers were assigned as the team sport (intervention) (n = 28 participants) or control (n = 20 participants) groups. The team sport sessions were underpinned by psychological behaviour change theory and consisted of weekly 1-h team sport sessions for 12 weeks. Measures of aerobic fitness, physical activity behaviour, group cohesion, interaction and communication, psychological wellbeing, health, anthropometrics and workplace experiences were recorded pre- and post-intervention. Data were analysed using a series of mixed ANOVAs. Results After 12 weeks significant improvements were observed in VO2 max (+ 4.5 ± 5.8 ml/min kg, P < .002, η 2 p = .182), interpersonal communication within teams (+ 3%, P < .042, η 2 p = .087) and mean weekly physical activity duration (+ 154.74′, P < .002, η 2 p = .071) in the intervention group. A significant (P < .012, η 2 p = .130) effect on body composition was observed in the intervention group. Conclusions Participation in team sport may be an effective method to improve the aerobic fitness and physical activity behaviour of employees, and promote interpersonal communication between colleagues. Individual health outcomes and social interactions have the capacity to influence the health of the organisation. The extent of which these findings are replicable across a scope of organisations should be examined objectively over the long term.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Sports Medicine - OpenVolume
3Issue
30Citation
BRINKLEY, A. ...et al., 2017. It's time to start changing the game: A 12-week workplace team sport intervention study. Sports Medicine - Open, 3:30.Publisher
© The Authors. Published by SpringerVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-08-14Publication date
2017Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Springer under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
2198-9761Publisher version
Language
- en