Changes in active commuting and changes in work ability and recovery from work

BACKGROUND: Active commuting (walking or cycling) to work may be a feasible way to increase physical activity and improve health and wellbeing also at work. There is increasing evidence on the health benefits of active commuting, but little is known about longitudinal associations between active commuting and work ability, and recovery from work. METHODS: We conducted an observational cohort study of 16,776 public sector employees who responded to the Finnish Public Sector study in 2020 and 2022. Within- and between-individual associations of changes in active commuting with changes in self-rated work ability and recovery from work (scale from 0 to 10) were examined using hybrid modelling. The change in active commuting was assessed with a repeated self-report of weekly frequency of commuting by walking or cycling that was multiplied with the daily commuting distance. While the within-individual part of the hybrid model accounts for all time-invariant confounders, both parts of the model were adjusted for time-varying confounders including socio-economic factors, body mass index, and health behaviors, and the between individual part with sex and age (birth year) (time-invariant). RESULTS: After adjustments, a 10 km weekly increase in active commuting was associated with a slight improvement in work ability in both within- and between-individual analyses (unstandardized B = 0.02, p = 0.01; unstandardized B = 0.03, p = 0.001, respectively). Similar increase in active commuting was associated with slightly improved recovery from work in between-individual analysis (unstandardized B = 0.03, 95%, p = 0.001), but the association was not replicated in within-individual analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that an increase in active commuting may have some potential for improving work ability, albeit the increase needs to be rather large to achieve even a small improvement in work ability. The results for recovery from work were inconclusive. KEY MESSAGES: • An increase in active commuting may improve work ability. • No conclusive evidence supporting that an increase in active commuting enhances recovery from work was found.