Sport and Physical Activity Participation in Workplace

Aim The main aim of this study is an investigation of leveraging and constraining factors of sport and physical activity participation in the workplace. Theoretical Background Sport and physical activity play a role in prevention of cardiovascular diseases and some cancers (Florido et al., 2016). A barometer indicated that 42% to 55% of French people did not reach the recommended sport and physical activity levels by public health institutes (Escalon et al., 2008). Chapman (2004) identified the workplace as influencing human behavior where health and well-being could be improved. As employees spend significant time at work, interventions at work promoting sport and physical activity would reach a large proportion of individuals. Thereby workplace could offer a social and environmental setting encouraging sport and physical activity. Despite of promising results, some authors noticed low participation of employees in these programs limit impacts in economics and health terms. In France, Pierre (2015) confirmed this assertion pointing out that physical activity participation rate in the workplace was between 10 to 15%. Different leveraging and constraining factors (demographic, psychological, environmental) can influence adult participation in leisure sport and physical activity and therefore can explain such low participation rates. Anagnostopoulos et al. (2016) showed that passion is an important part of workers' commitment, but to our knowledges, very few studies from the management literature have identified leveraging and constraining factors of sport and physical activity in the workplace. Multiple levels of influence could explain participation as described by the social-ecological framework (Linnan et al., 2001). This model emphasizes important relationships between multiple environmental, cultural, individual factors and sport and physical activity participation. Workplace has been characterized as "complex system" where individual, social and physical environmental contexts influence jointly health and well-being (Stockols et al., 1996). Dishman et al. (2009) advocated worksite Physical Activity (PA) promotion programs targeting individual, interpersonal, organizational levels to promote physical activity. Thus, the aim of this research project was to better identify the facilitating and constraining individual and organizational factors explaining sport and physical activity participation in the workplace. The roles of moderating factors such as firm size and business sectors were also investigated. Research Design, Methodology and Data Analysis We present results from our cross-sectional survey based on a electronic questionnaire (from SurveyMonkey) that included personal and organizational leveraging and constraining factors adapted from the work of Alexandris et al. (2002) and Molanorouzi et al. (2014), participation to sport and physical activities in the workplace, level of satisfaction from these programmes, Leisure-Time Physical Activity (LTPA) evaluated from the French version Godin-Shephard Leisure-Time Physical Activity Questionnaire (GSLTPAQ) and demographic information. Mean scores for each leveraging and constraining factors were calculated to determine which were the most common among participants. Moreover, we conducted independent sample t-test to test differences between leveraging and constraining factor scores based on leisure-time physical activity and demographics. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of participation. Results/Findings and Discussion Twenty-four companies (17 private and 7 public) participated in the research. 12 companies had more than 250 employees and the other twelve companies had less than 250 employees. In total, 1318 employees completed the survey (41 ± 10 years, 60% female). The most common constraining factor was time constraints, and the most common leveraging factors were physical/psychological condition and appearance. For the constraining factor, LTPA (formed by active and inactive participants) was negatively associated with time constraints (t = -3.71, P