How to Get Facebook at Work

Social Networking Flexes its Muscles

You used to be able to access social networking sites like Facebook from your work PC but now it has been taken away. Why? How can you possibly arrange the weekend without it? How can you check what photos you have been tagged in from last weekend?

Facebook is, according to the web information company Alexa, the most popular social networking site having overtaken MySpace last month. It also joins the list of sites companies prefer not to have workers using. Reasons for blocking sites vary from the concerns about network traffic, issues around data security down to the slightly more honest “you are here to work not browse”. I know of one company that has even blocked news sites including the BBC.

While I do agree that during working hours the need for access to such sites has very little credibility, there is no compelling reason to block access which also includes lunch hours. After all, your unpaid time at lunch has been compromised by the location of your work. You can’t exercise free choice in what you do, and if you live more than half an hour from home you wouldn’t even be able to check your Facebook page.



So how do you get your Facebook access at work? The answer came in a month or so ago with an email to Gamercize customer services, which found its way to my desk. The email was from an employee of a large corporation that had banned Facebook and was located out of town in a remote commercial zone. The disappointed worker had been keeping in touch with friends not by company telephone or company email, but by Facebook. He asked if we could contact his boss with an idea.

That is exactly what I did, putting forward his idea to use a couple of PCs, due for replacement, to be moved into the canteen and put on the internet. The justification for having these machines was given by having them connected with the Gamercize PC-Sport Stepper, helping the company provide exercise in the workplace. The two “Internet Café” machines, as they have been called, have been in for a week now and proved very popular.

Happy employees get to use the internet in their free time, without losing the opportunity for lunchtime exercise. The corporation is happy that they can provide this service to their employees and can start to address work health targets. Now all that remains if for those employees to fan the Gamercize Facebook page!

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Office Desk Exercise in Practice

Energise your Workplace

One Gamercize product doesn’t involve games at all, the GZ PC-Sport is an under desk exercise stepper that connects to a PC keyboard or mouse. The patented Gamercize technology is still there, requiring exercise to keep the input device working and pausing the input as a gentle reminder to keep moving if you stop.

Taking the lead from a surprisingly large number of our corporate customers and the responsibility to provide corporate wellness, I decided to roll them out to everyone in the office. To start with I asked everyone to try it for one week. After that week they had to decide if they wanted to keep it or give it back.

The thought of getting exercise at work appealed to some as a great time saver but for others it looked like it would be too hard to do. Everyone found a time or a task that suited them to exercise at work. At the end of the week, not one person took the option of having the exercise equipment removed from under their desk. Convenience was key, the option to exercise is right at your feet the whole time!

With the first week hurdle overcome, the real test would be the three month mark. Why three? It’s the limit for most people before they hide away regular fitness equipment never to be used again or give up the gym from a resolute January start. The gaming versions of Gamercize easily pass the three month test and well beyond, but would the same be true for the PC version?

We didn’t quite make 100%, as one person decided to give it a miss after a few weeks. But for everyone else, three months on, they’re all still using it, including me. From my observation everyone seems to be working better than before and there has been a noticeable drop in the number of days off sick. Things have really started buzzing around here, there’s definitely more energy around the place, every one's happier and the work is getting done faster!

I would recommend making your office and active office. The benefits to everyone are obviously visible. There are other options for an active office other than using Gamercize, but they come with some warnings to other office bosses; setting up a multitude of cardio machines in a dedicated office gym is very expensive and off-site activities can see lunch hours taking much more than the single hour. Whilst helping the wellness of your employees, you should factor in these costs if choosing a solution other than the Gamercize PC-Sport.

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Advanced Deskercise for Workers

Lunchtime Exercise Without the Rain
There have been a few stories in the news about fitness at work recently. Latest advice calls for an exercise hour for all workers.

The advice by experts is often seen as enforcement or unhelpful, but it is not intended to be. The main theme of all the advice is a well meaning message for everyone to get some extra exercise, it's good for you. The struggle is putting the message across in a meaningful way we can all relate to and apply to our own lives, if we choose.

An exercise hour is normally quite easy at work, at lunchtime go out for a walk or play a game of squash or football. It is often easier to arrange sporting activity in your free daylight hour with co-workers, than after a hard days work with chores, family responsibilities and dark evenings.

These pictures show what we have been doing to get more exercise. Typically we spend a lot of time sat at a computer. Working mostly, but some times browsing the web, playing games or posting to blogs. The interesting and enjoyable uses of our computers makes the time fly by. Lunch hours always seem so short, and an hour in the afternoon drags on. If we decide to have an exercise hour, then which hour is it best to use for exercise? The one that flies by is the smart choice, so you don't notice the effort.

The step exercise machine under the desk works well for the cold, rainy weather that is fast approaching. A far better choice than an under desk mini cycle, which tends to be very hard to use with wheeled chairs or low desks! Gamercize lends a hand, when switched into trainer mode, the input to the computer is paused if you stop moving. This is useful when you consider using the computer for enjoyable purposes will take you mind off exercise, and in fact so much so that most people forget to exercise!

As you are sitting there, browsing the web during your lunch hour reading this post, think about how much exercise you get at weekends. Then think about how much exercise you get during the working week. Chances are, if you work in an office, there is a bit more you can do, and maybe an exercise hour might be worth a try for a few weeks?

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