About This Course
This short course is aimed at anyone wishing to become an active workplace champion. Typical learners include NHS staff, those working in small, medium and large enterprises, and those working in charities and non-government organisations.
If you would like to arrange this training as a bespoke offering for your business or if you are seeking commercially focused training solutions, please contact the course lead to discuss further.
Why study this course?
On successful completion of this short course, the learner will be able to:
- Understand why movement in the workplace brings benefits to the employee and employer;
- Understand our relationship with movement and physical activity;
- Be able to reflect on and evaluate your workplace culture and its impact on movement;
- Understand how the conceptual frameworks of Physical Literacy and the COM-B model can inform your strategy, behaviours, and approach to promoting a culture of movement and physical activity in the workplace.
How long does this course take to complete?
This course is delivered through 2 on-line workshops. Each workshop will last for 3 hours and will be scheduled 3 weeks apart.
Tutors
Professor Jamie Macdonald, Course Lead
Jamie completed a PhD in clinical exercise physiology and is now a Professor of Sport and Exercise Science in the Institute for at Îá°®³Ô¹Ï. Jamie leads a program of applied research aiming to help more people to move more, more of the time. He is a founder member and Institution Lead of the and has an honorary contract with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB). Jamie’s favourite part of his role is collaborating with researchers and applied practitioners, on projects such as the generation of the Active Workplace Toolkit (soon to be published by BCUHB) and the writing of guidelines on physical activity for the . When not working, Jamie can be found in the outdoors, often with his daughter in tow, desperately trying to climb, bike and ski as well as he did 20 years ago.
Gethin Thomas
Gethin offers a range of consultancy, training and coaching support to the education, health and sport sectors. Gethin offers training, mentoring/coaching and will support organisations in their strategic planning. He also supports organisations to author resources, guidance and policy documents, and specialises in the following areas:
Education
-Curriculum for Wales
-Curriculum for Wales Health and Well-being Area of Learning and Experience
-Curriculum planning and design
-Developing teacher researchers
-Physical literacy informed physical education pedagogy
Health
-Developing active workplace cultures
-Physical literacy informed practice including strategic planning for increased movement and more active lifestyles
Introductory Video - Active Workplace Champion
Achieving Excellence in Research and Teaching Through an Active Workplace.
"So we've developed the Active Workplace Champion Training course to try to tackle some of the problems that we're seeing in society at the moment, which is insufficient levels of physical activity. And the workplace provides us with a fantastic opportunity. We spend a lot of time at work, and it provides us with this fantastic opportunity to be able to actually tackle that challenge of increasing the levels of physical activity and getting people to move more as part of their everyday lives.
And of course, the benefits then to the employee as well as the employer are embedded in empirical evidence. The research suggests that it is a mutually beneficial outcome that stems from this cultural change that were trying to bring about.
This training programme is really suitable for anyone who's passionate about trying to enhance physical activity and movement in their workplace. So it could be delivered to an employee or an employer at any level, but the most important thing is that they want to be involved in changing that culture and trying to give people the opportunity to be able to be more active within the workplace.
What we’re looking at here, is utilising movement, physical activity as a medium through which we can enhance human capacity. In other words, physical health, mental and emotional health as well as social health and wellbeing.
Changing behaviour is really challenging, and changing behaviour to healthy behaviours is particularly challenging because often it's hard work to increase physical activity, to move more. It requires a lot of motivation, plus a lot of other factors within the culture within your organisation.
The course itself is flexible enough to be offered either face to face, in person or online or a blended approach. It’s also flexible enough to have that continued bespoke support through coaching and mentoring. But also in terms of the action planning and what this cultural change might look like, what might the actions be over time and how we might build that in and what we need in terms of resourcing it to bring about the change we’re looking for It starts small, it starts with the little steps; walking meetings, using the stairs instead of lifts, standing at your desk. It grows and develops from there - as your belief in yourself grows, as your interaction with movement grows and develops and the notion of the positive affectivity and experiences in and through movement. It becomes self-fulfilling and an upward spiral, where those positive experiences lead to those positive changes in terms of your physical health, your emotional and mental wellbeing as well as your social wellbeing.
I think changing behaviour is challenging, and it is difficult to sustain healthy behaviours. It requires a lot of motivation, and the opportunity the workplace provides is you get to make the changes as part of your working day. We are using a train-the-trainer approach, so we are trying to help organisations to look after themselves, and that makes it much more sustainable and realistic for organisations to be able to really tackle that challenging behaviour change that's required to get those benefits from physical activity and movement."
Course Content
What will you study on this course?
An active workplace champion’s role is to inspire and influence colleagues to contribute towards a culture of movement and physical activity within the workplace.
This two-part interactive course is delivered by experts in physical activity and will prepare learners for taking on a workplace champion role within their own organisation.
The course will support you to lead by example and facilitate others to enhance their physical activity behaviour. You will develop an understanding of physical literacy and behaviour change principles, learn how to plan activities with empathy for individual colleagues needs, become a health communicator, and appreciate how to influence management and culture.
The course will be run over two 3hr workshops scheduled three weeks apart, with a reflective task in-between. After the course, learners will support each other through their newly developed network of active workplace champions, and can optionally receive mentoring from the course leaders.
List of units
Workshop 1:
- Introduction to the role of an active workplace champion
- Develop an understanding of why movement in the workplace brings benefits to the employee and employer
- Develop an understanding of our relationship with movement and
- physical activity
- Reflect on and evaluate your workplace culture and its impact on movement
- Begin to develop an understanding of how COM-B can inform the way we influence colleagues to move more and challenge sedentary workplace culture
Workshop 2:
- Re-visit key messages from workshop 1.
- Developing the role of the Active Workplace Champions.
- Develop your understanding of how the conceptual framework of Physical Literacy and the COM-B model can inform your strategy, behaviours, and approach to promoting a culture of movement and physical activity in the workplace.
- Become familiar with the available resources.
Course Cost
This online course costs £225 per person.
Application
Courses are scheduled to meet demand. Please register your interest below and we will be in touch with further information.