Ideas to motivate staff: Stairwell murals help cut lift use by half
As part of an initiative to get staff and visitors to use the stairs instead of the lifts at East Kootenay Regional Hospital, the green team came up with the idea of painting murals in the stairwells to make the surroundings more attractive. The local school was also involved in the initial murals by offering it as a class project for students. The paintings received a lot of positive feedback and helped increase traffic on the stairwells resulting in less use of the lifts and better health for those staff who decided to use the stairs.
But researchers Theadora Swenson and
The initiative has also helped generate conversation and even formed bonds between people by revealing personal information that others didn’t know. When one day somebody wrote “Someday I want to be cancer-free,” not knowing who it was, others began writing messages of support. The results show that adding interactive components to wall murals can increase the use of stairs.
Further information:
Inquiring Minds: Making Exercise Fun – Don’t just take the stairs, write on them. Rich Barlow, BU Today
http://www.bu.edu/today/2012/inquiring-minds-making-exercise-fun/
Increasing Stair Use in an Office Worksite Through an Interactive Environmental Intervention.
Theadora Swenson, Dr Michael Siegel. American Journal of Health Promotion, 27(5):323, 2013.