Physical Exercise and Health-Related Quality of Life in Office Workers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Thi Mai Nguyen,Jin Hee Kim,Van Huy Nguyen

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073791

Abstract

Office workers are at high risk for many chronic diseases, lowering their health-related quality of life (HRQOL). This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to summarize the effects of physical exercise on HRQOL in office workers with and without health problems using data obtained from randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental, and observational studies. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and several grey literature databases, and identified 26 relevant studies for the synthesis. Overall, physical exercise significantly improved general (standardized mean difference (SMD) = 1.05; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.66 to 1.44) and mental (SMD = 0.42; 95% CI: 0.19 to 0.66) HRQOL in office workers. Compared with healthy office workers, unhealthy office workers experienced greater improvements in general (unhealthy, SMD = 2.76; 95% CI: 1.63 to 3.89; healthy, SMD = 0.23; 95% CI: −0.09 to 0.56) and physical (unhealthy, SMD = 0.38; 95% CI: 0.17 to 0.58; healthy, SMD = −0.20; 95% CI: −0.51 to 0.11) HRQOL. Unsupervised physical exercise significantly improved general and mental HRQOL, while directly supervised physical exercise significantly improved only general HRQOL. Although physical exercise, especially unsupervised physical exercise, should be encouraged to improve HRQOL in office workers, detailed recommendations could not be made because of the diverse exercise types with different intensities. Therefore, further studies are needed to determine the optimal exercise for office workers with different health conditions.

Highlights

A healthy workplace is defined as a work environment where workers and managers collaborate to improve the health, safety, and well-being of the workforce and sustain the productivity of the business [1]
We excluded 76 publications for the following reasons: (1) one unavailable full text; (2) nine duplicated publications; (3) two ongoing trials; (4) six study protocols without mentioning any data; (5) six records focused on different research questions, despite mentioning physical exercise and Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in office workers; (6) 9 and 19 records did not provide data relating to physical exercise and HRQOL, respectively; and (7) 24 studies targeted other subjects, office workers
Of 26 studies selected for qualitative analysis, one observational study [33] was excluded from the meta-analysis because it focused only on physical functioning as an HRQOL domain

Summary

Introduction

A healthy workplace is defined as a work environment where workers and managers collaborate to improve the health, safety, and well-being of the workforce and sustain the productivity of the business [1]. Existing evidence has supported that HRQOL scores are associated with employee productivity, disability, and sickness-related absenteeism [1]. For these reasons, various interventions, such as the provision of health and safety, psychosocial/organizational culture, and personal health-related resources in the workplace, have been developed to improve employees’ HRQOL [1]. Office workers, whose primary tasks generally involve using computers, participating in meetings, giving presentations, reading, and speaking on the phone [3], are at high risk for many chronic diseases, lowering their HRQOL [4] Such diseases include musculoskeletal disorders, dry eye syndrome, cardio-metabolic diseases, coronary artery disease, Int. J.

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Conclusion