EMoCS project: Taking stock of the last 2 years

Coming to a close after 2 years of collaboration, the EMoCS project partners met for a last time in Helsinki early December 2019 to review their produced work and reflect on the ground left to cover.

The European Meeting of Company Sport (EMoCS) project set out to contribute to raising awareness about the importance of health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) around the workplace. Indeed, given the amount of time spent in and around the workplace, the latter is of crucial importance when it comes to promoting, encouraging and enabling regular sport and physical activity (SPA). Part of the challenge resides in the fact that SPA are activities and habits are yet to be connected to the workplace environment, despite the increasing physical inactivity crisis.

In order to raise awareness about this topic, EMoCS organised two open events. The first took place in September 2018 in Paris and included 4 roundtables, a sport village, an exhibition centre, and a digital ‘Walk&Run’ challenge. In other terms, this amounted to over 30 speakers and guests, over 40 exhibitors and over 1 000 participants, all from around Europe! EMoCS 2018 concluded by the signature of a declaration of intent from a variety of stakeholders willing to commit to create a taskforce that would reflect on the creation of a unique European Certification for Active Workplaces.

In 2019, the EMoCS project teamed up with our PACTE project to organise a workshop in Brussels. ‘Active Workplaces Active Europe’ was held in June in the Committee of the European Regions and gathered 100 participants from a  variety of backgrounds to take part in a panel discussion and three interactive workshop, which amounted to over 20 speakers and guests from across the continent. The event’s report is available here. The topical workshops each focused on the role of a specific sector to promote active workplaces: municipalities and local authorities; the creation of partnerships and alliances; and the creation of a European certification for active workplaces.

While the EMoCS project’s lifespan has reached its end, there is no doubt in the growing interest and scope for this topic in the near future, not only from the sport sector but also from the health, employment ones.