Walking Meetings: Designing Wellness & Productivity Into Work

Everyday employers are looking for ways to improve the productivity and health of their workforce.  The best way to do this is through what I call intuitive wellness and performance**.  One of the easiest intuitive ways to design greater wellness and performance into the job is through Walking meetings.   Walking meetings are a great way to achieve improvement in employee health, creativity and productivity.  Regardless of the season you should definitely think about conducting most or all of your meetings as walking meetings.  Of course, warm summer weather certainly allows these meetings to be held outdoors instead of in the office building.  Let’s look at the benefits of walking meetings:

·        Simply by changing the atmosphere from the conference room to walking the halls or outdoors tends to spark creativity

o   A University of Michigan study found that people who spent time outside were better able to solve creative problems.  Researchers split the group in two, and asked them both to solve a series of problems. The group that had spent time outside, were able to respond much more accurately.

o   Recently, researchers at Stanford University tested creativity in people that were walking vs sitting.  They found the majority of people were more creative when they were walking—that creativity improved by an average of 60% when the person was walking. What was interesting, was that they found that it was simply the act of moving, not necessarily the beauty of nature that spurred creativity. This means that even if the weather doesn’t allow walking outside you should still go for a walk, even if it’s indoors.

·        Instead of slouching or being uncomfortable in the conference room chair, you’ll be walking and moving your body—burning a few more calories and reducing discomfort and tightness compared to prolonged sitting

·        Walking is an alternative that makes meetings less painful, i.e. think Dilbert—boring, needless, ineffective meetings are more tolerable when moving than sitting around a table in a dull room

·        Walking outdoors for 15 minutes or so with good sun exposure will provide the needed amount of natural vitamin D

·        Working memory improves while walking (a study out of Germany)

·        Walking with a small group of people tends to make meetings feel more personal and informal allowing everyone to loosen up, freely share ideas and make the meeting more effective

Standing/Walking Meetings as Standard Work

A company can say they allow walking or standing meetings but that won’t necessarily get people do actually do them.  Companies can make standing or walking meetings standard work, i.e. borrowing a term from lean, this is the way we hold meetings around here.  This is how standing or walking meetings become the rule and sitting meetings will be the exception.  Below are examples of meeting standard work that companies have implemented:

·        Meeting length should not exceed 60 minutes unless absolutely necessary (attention, focus, creativity decreases as time increases)

·        Walking meetings:

o   5 or less people

o   Hallways/space is available indoors that won’t disturb other people working

o   Walk outdoors when weather is appropriate

o   Preferred meeting method when creativity/brainstorming is needed

o   Time: 60 minutes or less

·        Standing meetings:

o   No limit on the number of people

o   Time: 30 minutes or less

·        Sitting meetings: (there is no sitting only meeting)

o   No limit on number of people

o   Alternate between sitting and standing every 30 minutes

Walking meetings—a simple and easy piece companies can implement in the workplace to improve employee wellness and performance.  Is your company doing walking meetings?  Why or why not? 

**Intuitive wellness and performance  which I have defined to mean there is no focused, concerted effort or program to get people to do wellness or efficiency things, i.e. sign up for this program or go through this training and then please behave accordingly.  The work is designed in such a way to incorporate wellness and optimize performance without having to think or do anything out of the ordinary)