Background and objectives: The workplace is often highlighted as a potential location to promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles. Yet debates still exist concerning the appropriateness of ostensibly ‘leisure’ activities within traditional spaces of work. Moreover, little consensus exists concerning good practice, whilst workplace structures, cultures, interpersonal relationships, personal motivations and local/national policy architecture influence programme effectiveness. The ERASMUS+ funded ‘Workplace Accreditation Certification’ project was designed to develop an evidence-based certification process through which to certify workplaces as active.
Methods: In order to achieve this aim, the programme integrated several types of evidence obtained from several sources. These included a scoping review of literature, multi-stage interviews conducted online by partners with ‘pioneer’ employers across multiple European countries, and iterative consultations with cross-sectorial health and physical activity promotion experts. The project comprised 10 cross-sectorial partners who supported this process.Discussion: In this presentation, we reflect upon the challenges inherent in integrating multiple formats of evidence into systemic, supportive and applied solutions to certification processes in a meaningful way. We discuss the challenges of packaging and communicating such data to a multiple, often sceptical audiences. Finally, we consider the process through which we might obtain, analyse and synthesize multi-lingual data to produce meaningful solutions for employers and employees in multicultural settings.
Conclusion: The project demonstrated the importance of qualitative methods in the translation of knowledge from evidence to practice. It also highlights the importance of maintaining balance between transferrable knowledge, and adapting solutions to specific contextual and socio-cultural contexts in how solutions are enacted.