Can physical activity during work be designed so it promotes health among industrial workers?

INTERVENTION: This study will investigate a 12‐week workplace intervention aiming to improve the musculoskeletal health of industrial workers by redesigning their productive work. More specifically, the intervention aims to redesign the workers’ physical work behaviors towards being ‘just right’, i.e. having a ‘just right’ composition of sitting, standing and active work and ‘just right’ alternations between these three, so that their musculoskeletal health may be improved. The researchers define the ‘just right’ composition of a workday as consisting of six blocks organised as 3/6 of sitting, 2/6 of standing and 1/6 of active work, performed in a sequence where physical behavior is alternated roughly every hour. This ‘just right’ composition was based on analysis of objective measurements of physical behaviours at work and self‐rated health from a large sample of industrial workers, i.e. the DPhacto cohort (doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2019.01.003). Specifically, among these 561 industrial workers, the researchers observed that those workers with the best self‐rated health spent 65% of their work time sitting, 28% standing and 7% active. The study will be conducted within at least one organisation where workers primarily perform manual labour, selected based on its/their motivation to participate. Two production sites at each participating organisation will be involved to increase participant numbers and diversity of workers with manual labour. A ‘local workplace group’ of representatives from management, staff, health and safety (separate department working with work environment across the whole organisation), and work environment (representative among workers with increased responsibilities in work environment) will rece CONDITION: Musculoskeletal health among industrial workers ; Musculoskeletal Diseases PRIMARY OUTCOME: Low back pain intensity is measured with a numeric scale (NRS, 0‐10) at baseline (following work for 5 days in week 1) and follow up (following work for 5 days at week 12) INCLUSION CRITERIA: =20 hours weekly work at one of the two participating production sites within the organization SECONDARY OUTCOME: ; 1. Composition of physical behaviors (i.e., sitting, standing and active) during work measured with accelerometry at baseline (for 5 days in week 1) and follow up (for 5 days in week 12); 2. Accumulated time in long bouts of sitting and standing during work measured with accelerometry at baseline (for 5 days in week 1) and follow up (for 5 days in week 12); 3. Perceived physical exertion at work measured with a numeric scale (0‐10) measured at baseline (following work for 5 days at week 1) and follow up (following work for 5 days at week 12); 4. Fatigue and energy levels measured with a numeric scale (0‐10) measured at baseline (following work for 5 days at week 1) and follow up (following work for 5 days at week 12); 5. Self‐rated productivity at work measured on a numeric scale (0‐10) at baseline (week 1) and follow up (week 12); 6. Cost‐effectiveness measured by incremental change in cost‐effectiveness (ratio of incremental change in cost and change in low back pain intensity) and return on investment (indicated by the return‐on‐investment ratio) collected during the 12‐week intervention; 7. Dose delivered, dose received and fidelity measured with records of consultations delivered (conducted in weeks 1, 4 and 7), list of participants (collected at weeks 1, 4 and 7), and work schedules (collected at weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 weeks);