Active Office Model

As Active Living Association, we’ve created “Active Office Model” to implement a model where our workplaces have been re-considered and transformed to meet our physical activity needs.

With spatial and social transformations, it is possible to stimulate office life and create an active office culture. As Active Living Association, we design and implement spatial and social transformation models that are suitable for the culture of the office.

We spend a significant portion of our daily lives at work. Adding to the time spent preparing for the work and the time we spent on transportation, we spend a lot of time for our jobs, in fact, until the time of retirement. Some of us need to read documents all day, some of us also do not leave their desks, including lunch breaks. In other words, we spend most of our daily time inactive.

However, every person needs physical activity for a healthy and quality life. Physical activity play an active role in prevention of serious diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes, depression, cancer, prostate and colon cancer.

People need to recognize this need and mobilize their daily lives in line with their own needs and opportunities.

• Assessment, Measurement and Designing Project: Before developing office-specific models, we are conducting a measurement-evaluation study to measure the level of physical activity of office workers, to provide reports on physical activity situations and to draw individual road maps. Active Living, fitness, sports health and nutrition experts visit the fields of work, examine the physical conditions of the work areas, make interviews about the general tendencies of the employees in their working hours and free time, analyze the areas of use of the employees’ offices and interpret the outputs with data from the country and the world. As the second phase, we measure the physical activity levels of employees, give report cards and create personal road maps. Employees participate in measurements with devices that measure Body Mass Index (BMI), Performance (maxVo2), flexibility, balance, strength and hand-arm-eye coordination. As a result of the measurements, employees are provided with reports on their physical activity, and tips on how they can become more active. The reports of the employees who complete their measurements are interpreted by an expert consultant. Active Living Specialist offers employees a personal physical activity program for a more active life.
• Spatial Transformation Applications: We develop models that emphasize existing physical activity opportunities within the office and create new opportunities. Implementations of spatial transformation includes a series of applications such as signs for walking inside the office building, stairs and elevator signalizations pointing to active living opportunities, maps showing active living opportunities and routes in and around the building, bicycle parking spaces, desks with pedals to improve strength and balance skills, portable pedals that allows exercise at desks and improve strength and durability skills, door pull-up bars that enhance the strength and endurance skills, pilates seating balls, flexibility bands that can be mounted on worktables, wall mounts or floor-mounted flexibility stations.
• Social Transformation: In order to increase the frequency of use of spatial transformation applications and ensure that the active living culture in the office becomes a habit of everyday life, it is necessary to support these practices with social activities. For this purpose, we organize seminars for employees on physical activity, mobility in business life, physical activity with children, physical activity at home; organizing in-house sports events clubs and organizing weekend activities for employees.