Across South Australia, the Office for Recreation and Sport has been promoting its “be active for 30 minutes a day” message for several years.

Now, it is taking that message to the state's workplaces.

Gavin Fairbrother from the Office for Recreation and Sport held a number of workshops across metropolitan Adelaide and regional South Australia on the benefits of promoting workplace wellness programs, as part of WorkCover SA's Safe Work Month.

During his presentation he said engaging workplaces was one of the Office's key goals in spreading their overall be active message.

“Our aim is to get South Australians more active, more often,” Mr Fairbrother said.

“Targeting the workplace is an important strategy for us.”

In fact, the concept of work has been ingrained in the organisation's definition of physical activity, which is described as “any sustained bodily movement that expends energy, this includes activity taken as part of work, active transport, household chores, recreation, exercise and sport”.

Mr Fairbrother said because the average Australian spent around 30pc of their waking hours at work, taking the be active message to workplaces offered a more comprehensive approach.

“We've got to think about strategies that target the individual and instigate individual change, but we also need to think about organisational change strategies as well,” he said.

He was hopeful more and more workplaces would begin considering implementing workplace wellness programs, which he said were mutually beneficial for both the company and its employees.

Mr Fairbrother said it had been proven that keeping employees physically active led to improved participation levels, with statistics showing workplace wellness programs could reduce the instance of sick leave by up to 32pc and increase productivity by up to 52pc.

“Return on investment for workplace wellness programs can be as much as three to one,” Mr Fairbrother said.

But the benefits were not just fiscal.

“Active workplaces can be seen to be more socially responsible,” he said.

And the benefits are not just short term, but have a potentially longer term impact when considering the aging Australian work population.

“We want to plan ahead for an aging workforce, we need to think how we can keep our aging employees healthy and productive for longer,” he said.

While benefits for the employer were important, Mr Fairbrother said it was the individual workers who stood to reap the most rewards from living a more active lifestyle.

“Benefits for the employees include a reduction in lifestyle diseases, better concentration, improved memory, better ability to deal with stress and better rapport with colleagues,” he said.

So how to encourage more physical activity at work?

“If (workers) are going to be active at work, there needs to be some sort of activity provided by the employer,” Mr Fairbrother said.

This could include the provision of workplace based structured or unstructured activities, or a combination of both.

Common structured activities provided by employers include fitness programs, discounted gym memberships and social sports, while unstructured activities included encouraging active meetings and face to face contact rather than email, encouraging riding or walking to work and the provision of bike storage facilities.

Importantly, Mr Fairbrother said it was essential for employers to “take ownership” of wellness programs, to increase the likelihood of take-up of the message across all other levels of the organisation.

This then highlighted the need for wellness programs to be endorsed at a company policy level, to ensure the program does not rely on a single person and is kept going through changes in staff and management.

In fact, Mr Fairbrother said he would like to the movement go even higher, to see policy changes at the government level.

“We'd like to see a policy which requires employers to provide 30pc of the recommended 30 minutes daily activity, just 10 minutes per day in the workplace,” he said.

“Mandatory exercise for sedentary workers – can you imagine it!”