Achievement Explores Sedentary Behavior — See Where Your Industry Fares
By: Mithya Srinivasan
Tags: Health, Nonprofit, Retail, Sedentary Behavior, Holidays

We’re back to share some additional analysis around employers and activity. Last time, we did an overview of all the employers represented on Achievement. As a follow up, we started to think about a way to quantify and characterize how sedentary an individual Achiever is throughout their work day and plotted that measure during work hours for an entire years worth of step data.

A Deep Dive On Physical health:

A look at how our in-house data scientists define sedentary:

We know that steps are only one measure of how active an individual is. That’s why our data science team decided to examine steps for a specific duration of time. We wanted to better understand how frequency and steps could influence calculating a sedentary score of sorts.

We looked at three metrics — daily total sedentary time, daily sedentary bout mean length, and daily number of sedentary bouts, where a sedentary bout is >= 10 consecutive minutes of 0 steps. Below, we examine the daily sedentary bout mean length specific to industries and employment status. In simpler terms, the daily sedentary bout mean length examines the minute level step count taken from a Fitbit device. When the step count is 0 for 10 or more minutes in a row, then the number of minutes is counted. Once all sedentary bouts have been identified, the minute counts are averaged for all people in an industry or employment status.

The Top Active Industries According to Sedentary Score:

Across industries, the least sedentary, according to the daily sedentary bout mean length metric was the education industry.

The remaining top five were rank ordered as follows:

Nonprofits

Real Estate

Finance

Utilities and Energy

Construction

Though food and drink and retail aren’t industries featured above, you’ll see below unique trends that we surfaced in these industries specific to seasonality. While they rank lower on sedentary mean bout times, there are distinct spikes and falls throughout the calendar year.

Do Achievers in Retail Step It Up During Black Friday or Valentine’s Day?

We were curious to see what the seasonal trends were for our Achievers that worked in education and those in retail, given that their work typically has distinct seasonal spikes and breaks.

For retail, we wanted to see how the holiday season and other unique holidays played into sedentary score.

For retail…

It turns out that the holiday time truly is a busy time of year! The sedentary bout mean time had a minimum in January. It saw another dip (meaning high movement) prior to Feb 14th on Valentine’s Day. Further, we saw low sedentary mean bout time in early April into May, perhaps also suggesting that those working in retail were busy and on their feet again during potential post winter sales and Memorial Day/summer sales. During Black Friday there was no specific dip; however, this could be because some retail workers were at home celebrating the holidays while others were working on Black Friday, effectively balancing the mean score.

When are teachers the least sedentary? Is it during the school year or summer time?

For education…

It turns out that the start of the academic year is very active and less sedentary. While during November, December, January and the summer months, there are higher amounts of sedentary behavior. We saw a distinct pattern of sedentary behavior right around the holidays (a not so surprising human response — possibly when Achievers are packed indoors!). Perhaps this behavior also means that activity for teachers is tied to work in the classroom, so the summer time includes less structured time with less daily activity.

When’s the food and drink industry most sedentary?

In the world of food and drink, there’s rarely a quiet moment. February through June is consistently low when it comes to sedentary bout mean time. There are short pockets of lower sedentary time in October and January (suggesting a short pause when those who work in food and drink come up for air). Maybe it also means that individuals are staying in and cooking in more as part of those January New Year’s Resolutions.

Where does finance stack up in sedentary score throughout the calendar year?

In the world of finance, we saw pre-tax season and post tax-season to be the least sedentary time for those working in finance. We suppose it’s likely that during this time, those Achievers in finance are on the go, attending meetings, and therefore are more active during the day.

What moments saw significant activity patterns for nonprofits?

Nonprofits like retail, education, and food & drink also had distinct seasonal patterns. We looked at days in the calendar year that corresponded to the lowest and highest peaks in sedentary mean time to see when our nonprofit workforce was most and least sedentary.

In terms of the sedentary bout workday means, we saw the most consistent moments of low sedentary bout moments during May. In comparison, the months of September, the end of November, and December into January were distinctly higher in sedentary bout moments.

Sedentary Score by Lifestyle:

We know that the type of work isn’t the only thing that influences how sedentary you are during the day. It’s also about the nature of your lifestyle. Within our Achievement community, retirees and stay-at-home moms had a lower sedentary mean compared to fully employed, self employed, and employed part-time Achievers.

Perhaps this indicates that those who have more static desk jobs or self employed lifestyles are not as active throughout the day next to Achievers who aren’t constrained by a structured work schedule or those who are on their feet managing a household.

Stay tuned for more. We’ll share a concluding digest on our Employer Survey analysis next month. In our next report, we’ll share results from questions that we crowdsourced from fellow Achievers related to work/life balance and tips and tricks for staying active throughout the work week, and we’ll be narrowing in on sedentary behavior during work hours to see if there are any trends during the work day clock.

The Achievement Team