What are the Facilitators and Obstacles to Participation in Workplace Team Sport? A Qualitative Study

Working age adults are failing to meet physical activity recommendations. Inactive behaviours are increasing costs for diminished individual and organisational health. The workplace is a priority setting to promote physical activity, however there is a lack of evidence about why some employees choose to participate in novel workplace activities, such as team sport, whilst others do not. The aim of this study was to explore the complexity of facilitators and obstacles associated with participation in workplace team sport. Twenty-nine semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted with office workers (58% female) (36 ± 7.71) from manufacturing, public services, and educational services. Data was analysed through template analysis. Five sub-level (i.e., intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational, community and societal influences) facilitate participation or create obstacles for participants. Participants were challenged by a lack of competence, self-efficacy, negative sporting ideals and amotivation. Unhealthy competition, an unstable work-life balance and unsupportive colleagues created obstacles to participation. An unsupportive organisation and workplace culture placed demands on workplace champions, funding, facilities and communication. Healthy competitions, high perceptions of competence and self-efficacy, and being motivated autonomously enabled participation. Further, relatedness and social support created a physical activity culture where flexible working was encouraged and team sport was promoted in accessible locations within the organisation. Researchers should consider accounting for complexity of these influences. A participatory approach may tailor interventions to individual organisations and the employees that work within them. Interventions whereby autonomy, competence and relatedness are supported are recommended. This may be achieved by adapting sports and training workplace champions.


Background
Inactivity and sedentary behaviour are well-established modifiable risk factors for non-communicable illness and conditions, known to contribute to premature mortality [1]. These include coronary heart disease (CHD), type 2 diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, some forms of cancer and diminished mental health outcomes (e.g., depression) [2,3]. Recent estimations indicate the direct health care and indirect costs (e.g., productivity) for inactivity's impact on CHD, stroke, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer and colon cancer totalled $67.5 billion globally ($18.49 million direct health care costs in the UK) in 2013 [4].
Adults in high-income countries are struggling to reach and maintain minimum national and international physical activity guidelines (i.e., 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week) [1,5,6]. For example, in 2012 only 67% of working age men and 55% of working age women reported meeting minimum weekly physical activity guidelines in the UK [6]. Therefore, improving participation in physical activity remains a priority of public health policy [1][2][3][4].

The Workplace and Physical Activity
An employee's physical activity behaviour is associated with the health of the organisation [4,7,8]. Indeed, sickness absenteeism and sickness presenteesim are known to be influenced by the adoption of inactive and sedentary behaviours [9,10]. Likewise, empirical evidence has associated antecedents of poor work performance (e.g., low productivity; fatigue; work engagement) and employee turnover (e.g., low job satisfaction; high job stress; muscular-skeletal pain; burnout) with an inactive workplace [11][12][13][14]. Evidence indicates these factors attributable to inactivity alone contributed to an observed $13.7 billion global loss in productivity in 2013 [4].
Further, sedentary working environments (e.g., deskbound roles) and inactive working behaviours may contribute to the presence and costs of non-communicable illnesses, injuries and conditions [2,15]. Therefore, promoting workplace physical activity remains a priority for occupational health promotion [4,16,17].
The workplace provides opportunities, funding streams and support for the promotion of physical activity, whilst the workforce is a stable population with a consistent level of exposure to physical activity programmes [7,8,18]. The complexity of participation should however be considered. Organisational factors such as the accessibility of facilities [19]; presence of funding [20]; and available time may influence participation in workplace physical activity [21]. Further, psychosocial factors such as the attitudes of colleagues, superiors and workplace champions (i.e., an employee adopting ownership and responsibility for delivering health promoting opportunities to their colleagues), and support from within the workplace culture may encourage or discourage participation [22,23].

Participation in Workplace Team Sport
A recent review has demonstrated the benefits of team sport within a workplace setting [24].
Evidence from experimental designs indicates participation in workplace team sport has the capacity to improve individual health outcomes (e.g., cardiorespiratory health, musculoskeletal function, psychological well-being) and organisational health outcomes (e.g., productivity, sickness absence, workability) in a similar degree to workplace physical activity interventions (e.g., walking, active transport) [25][26][27][28]. Further, participation in workplace team sport may have additional social benefits, which are yet to be identified through workplace physical activity programmes. These include, positively influenced relationships, communication and team cohesion within the workplace [29][30][31][32][33][34].
However, poorly described homogeneous samples and a lack of empirical evidence limits the research examining workplace team sport [24]. Critically, there is a lack of qualitative evidence exploring why employees participate in workplace team sport and the facilitators and obstacles these individuals encounter. While extensive evidence discussing the enablers and barriers faced by children, young adults and the elderly is available in a sporting context, the same cannot be said for working age adults [35]. Certainly, this gap in research limits the effectiveness and sustainability of future team sport programmes.
To date, six qualitative studies have explored the facilitators and obstacles associated with participation in workplace team sport [34][35][36][37][38][39]. While this evidence offers some insight, it should be noted these studies broadly investigated participation in workplace physical activity rather than team sport directly, and therefore the findings are open to interpretation.
For example, low perceptions of self-competence have created obstacles for employees considering playing football with their colleagues [35]. While the evidence evaluating -Workplace Challenge‖ (i.e., a workplace health promotion scheme focusing on team sport) indicates the attitudes of employees and workplace champions can influence the workforces' participation in team sport [37][38][39]. Likewise, a study of workplace wellness schemes (some of which contained workplace team sports) suggests participation is influenced by the culture within the workplace [36].
Finally, the management and communication of opportunities may create acceptance within peer-groups [34].
For the promotion of workplace team sport to be successful, the specific obstacles and facilitators must be considered. A comprehensive understanding of these factors may allow researchers and practitioners to successfully tailor team sport into a workplace setting.

An Ecological Perspective
Evidence suggests physical activity behaviour in complex activities such as workplace team sport can be best understood through an ecological approach [40]. An ecological approach suggests the behaviour underpinning participation is influenced by intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational, environmental and societal determinants [40].
Intrapersonal determinants reflect how psychological and biological factors enable or challenge behaviour [41]. A psychological influence may be perceptions of competence, while a biological influence may be a chronic health condition [42]. Interpersonal determinants refer to socially desirable factors. For example, employees are known to seek the support of colleagues or conform to the attitudes of managers [34]. Organisational determinants are influences on a workplace, departmental or cultural level [40]. For example, individual behaviour may be influenced by the working practises of an organisation [22]. Environmental determinants reflect logistics and structural factors that influence behaviour. For example, facilities may encourage or discourage participation in workplace team sport [37,38]. Societal determinants refer to how policy and society driven attitudes (e.g., gender inequality) influence individual behaviour and experiences and perceptions of sport [40].
Participation in workplace team sport is a complex process that may be influenced from a societal, organisational, social and psychological standpoint [34][35][36][37][38][39]. Therefore, this study adopted an ecological approach to understand the facilitators and obstacles reported by participants [40]. The primary aim of this exploratory study was to gain an understanding on what determinants facilitate and challenge participation in workplace team sport.

Research Design
An exploratory design using semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews explored what facilitates participation and what creates obstacles for participation in workplace team sport [43]. The trustworthiness of face-to-face interviews is well established [43], while telephone interviews allow the researcher to collect data around the demands balanced by participants [44].
Ethical approval was granted from Loughborough University's Human Participants sub-committee.

Sampling
Purposive sampling was used to recruit employees participating and not participating in workplace team sport. Participants were recruited from private and public organisations in the UK (i.e., manufacturing and sales; public services; and educational services) [45]. A representative from occupational health was contacted by email and/or telephone to explain the purpose of the study and to arrange data collection.
To insure data discussing a variety of experiences regarding workplace team sport was collected; all employees, line managers and workplace champions were sampled. Participants were excluded from participation if they were not permanently contracted members of staff. Participants were invited to take part in an interview by telephone or email by the researcher or by an occupational health representative within their organisation.

Procedure
An interview schedule guided data collection (see Table 1). This explored, (i) physical activity participation; (ii) workplace physical activity and team sport motivation; (iii) workplace team sport participation; (iv) workplace team sport facilitators and obstacles; (v) set-up, maintenance and adherence to workplace team sport; and (vi) closing statements.
From January 2015 to August 2015, twenty-four face-to-face individual interviews and five telephone interviews were conducted during working hours in café's, offices, meeting spaces and conference rooms by two of the researchers 1 trained in interview techniques (i.e., active listening, encouraging discourse, generating rapport).
With the knowledge and consent of participants, interviews were recorded on a digital voice recorder (Olympus VN-7700). Open-ended questions were asked to encourage discourse while probes were used to encourage participants to expand on interesting responses. Interviews lasted between 30 and 50 minutes (M = 36 minutes).

Analysis
Recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and a template analysis was undertaken to identify and define key themes within the data [46]. Template analysis has provided trustworthiness and reflexivity in previous occupational health research [46]. Template analysis uses priori-themes to guide analysis towards a given research question. 1 Both of the researchers had experiences within an organisational setting. AB had previously managed within the retail industry, while JF undertook a placement in a human resources department within the manufacturing industry. AB is white British male aged 26, while JF is a white British female aged 22. By virtue of a lack of experience, both considered themselves naï ve to the experiences faced throughout full-time employment and the impact of participating in workplace team sport.
The initial priori themes were based on the ecological model [40], while familiarisation in the data created a series of preliminary codes. These codes were attached to the initial priori themes where appropriate. If a code could not be attached, a new theme was developed. Once completed, a template was produced. The themes were grouped into first (e.g., factors that facilitate taking part in workplace team sport); second (e.g., interpersonal factors influencing participation in workplace team sport); third (e.g., social approval, understanding and support); and fourth (e.g., shared experience and group membership) level themes. The template was revised until it reflected the complete data set. All members of the research team gave their consensus on the data by reviewing the identified themes.

Participant Demographics
Twenty-nine employees with a range of job roles took part in this study (72% in a position of superiority over their colleagues). These participants (58% female) were aged between 22 and 57 (36 ± 7.71), had worked at their organisation from 2 months to 28 years (6 ± 6.12) and worked within teams. All the participants sampled reported being in a good state of health and participated in physical activity in their leisure time or workplace (e.g., soccer, exercise classes, yoga). All the participants in this study worked in office based roles. Additional participant demographics are available in Table 2.

Context of the Study
Fifty five percent of the sample participated in office-based team sports, traditional team sports and individual-team sports. Of these sixteen employees, six women participated in workplace team sport. Office-based team sports can be conceptualised as team sports that take place in an office space or breakout area. These sports were organised by groups of employees and often the organisation provided equipment to participate (e.g., a sports centres) during breaks in the working day or after-working hours.
Participants playing team sport with their colleagues reported the facilitators and obstacles they encountered (i.e., denoted with TS in quotations). In contrast, participants not playing team sport (i.e., denoted with NP in quotations) typically described their barriers to participation. However, in some cases these participants were considering playing workplace team sport, and therefore discussed what motivated them to contemplate participation.

Overview of Themes
The facilitators and obstacles underpinning participation in workplace team sport are represented by the ecological model [40], and its intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational, environmental and societal themes (see Table 3). These themes emerged across all participants' data regardless of job role, superiority or the industry they worked within. The findings representing these themes are presented below.

Support from Colleagues and Managers
The attitudes and behaviour of colleagues and managers provided support for team sport within the workplace. For example, some participants supported their colleagues through the psychosocial (e.g., lack of self-efficacy) and organisational (e.g., job demands and expectations) obstacles

Physical Activity and Workplace Team Sport Motivation and Benefits
What do you enjoy about physical activity? What motivates you to take part (facilitators) in physical activity/workplace team sport? What restricts your involvement (obstacles) physical activity/workplace team sport? How does physical activity benefit you? How does physical activity/workplace team sport benefit your working life? What can your company gain from having physically activity employees?

Workplace Team Sport Participation
Do you take part in workplace team sport? What are your thoughts on workplace team sport? Better or worse than physical activity? (prefer physical activity on your own?) Would you want to participate with your colleagues?

Workplace Team Sport Benefits
What benefits does or could workplace team sport hold for you (individual), your team (group) and workplace (organisation)?

Workplace Team Sport Facilitators and Obstacles
What would motivate you to attend? (facilitators) What would stop you attending (obstacles) Do you think there would be any workplace enablers or barriers associated with workplace team sport? (culture; bureaucratical; external; environments; facilities; funding; time; resources) What times would work best? What sports would you like?

Set-up, Maintenance and Adherence
How should workplace team sport be set-up, maintained and managed? (HR; individual; committee)?

Closing Statements
Overall do you think workplace team sport would hold positive/negative health benefits for the company or a worthwhile venture? Do you have any further thoughts on the idea or anything else to add?  Sharing the demands of organising and delivering team sport created a professional approach and a sense of control for the employer. This sense of control provided investment and support for an effective programme to be implemented, and therefore a facilitator to participation. In some cases,

Communication
Effective strategies that raised awareness and facilitated participation included a variety of visual (e.g., notice boards) and digital (e.g., staff intranet; social media) methods. A frequent communication method mentioned was virtual spaces (e.g., -Yammer‖, social media and digital message boards). These virtual spaces enabled participation due to the level of flexibility, personal interaction and two-way communication they offered. In contrast, forms of communication without this two-way communication were reported to demotivate participation and create obstacles due to a lack of flexibility and availability offsite. For example, the intranet presented these obstacles

The Support of External Sporting Organisations
Finally, some of the organisations sampled had a relationship with an external sporting organisation such as a national governing body, regional sports partnership or local sports club. These networks enabled individual's to deliver team sport within their workplace. Often, financial constraints and a lack of resources led organisations to seek support from external sporting organisations. External sporting organisations offer support by proving resources, sports leaders and education to deliver team sport: -So we worked with four governing bodies that brought someone in to deliver it on the day.

Discussion
This study used semi-structured interviews with employees to understand the complexity of participating in workplace team sport. Template analysis, interpreted through an ecological model, revealed participation in workplace team sport is influenced by (i) intrapersonal, (ii) interpersonal, (iii) organisational, (iv) environmental and (v) societal factors. More specifically, intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational and environmental factors facilitate participation and create obstacles for employees considering or participating in workplace team sport. Further, factors shaped by societal attitudes such as bias and inequality in sport only challenged participation.

The Influence of Intrapersonal Factors
The findings of this study indicate intrapersonal factors can influence participation.
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) proposes that supporting needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness can promote wellbeing and regulate autonomous motivation, while thwarting needs leads to illbeing and controlled forms of motivation [47]. Displays of competence and exercising in a group setting are associated with thwarted needs for competence and controlled introjected forms of motivation [47]. Therefore, it is unsurprising to note that antecedents of thwarted competence and introjected motivation such as diminished perceptions of competence, a negative experience of school sport, challenges surrounding body image and peer expectations created obstacles to participation in workplace team sport.
Further a fear of failure may reduce participation in workplace team sport [48]. Fears surrounding failure are created by social comparisons with a colleagues' performance in team sport or their colleagues' expectations of their performance in sport [38]. Likewise, unhealthy competitive behaviours (e.g., aggression, over-competitiveness, critiquing) were reported to reduce self-efficacy and thwart needs for competence and relatedness. Evidence, suggests self-efficacy and thwarted needs for competence and relatedness are associated with maladaptive forms of controlled motivation [49][50][51]. While, a fear of failure and the associated negative social comparisons are connected to reduced perceived competence, which likewise promotes the adoption of maladaptive behaviours (e.g., embarrassment; lack of self-efficacy; anxiety) [47,48,52,53]. Further, such factors are known to underpin the adoption of controlled introjected forms of motivation and behaviour [47].
Tailoring workplace team sport to support needs for competence, may promote more autonomous motivation and maintained behaviour. The findings of this study suggest competence can be supported through adapted or novel team sports. Sports with adapted rules or sports which are new to most may improve perceptions of competence and self-efficacy [53]. Evidence indicates this process is achieved through supporting and addressing challenges surrounding competence and facilitating antecedents of autonomous motivation, such as intrinsic motivation, enjoyment, and mastery experiences [49].
Participation and adherence to physical activity programmes is associated with supported needs for autonomy [49][50][51]. In this study, employees who participated in workplace team sport reported their enjoyment to predispose autonomous motivation. Supporting autonomy fosters psychological functioning, autonomous motivation and maintained behaviour [47,49,50]. Evidence suggests the adoption of more autonomous forms of motivation and behaviour can be achieved through the adoption of autonomy supportive leadership or coaching [49,51]. Autonomy support provides an individual with a meaningful choice, reason and foundation for participation [49]. Within the workplace, autonomy support could be provided by champions who acknowledge the perspective of individuals and minimise the presence of pressure [50,51,53]. Researchers may consider adopting autonomy support strategies by encouraging workplace champions to adapt the rules of sport and imparting the benefits of team sport to employees [47,[49][50][51].

The Influence of Interpersonal Factors
In this study, interpersonal factors influenced participants contemplating or playing workplace team sport. The social relationships within workplace team sport reduced intrapersonal obstacles to participation, while commitments made to colleagues positively supported needs for relatedness [50,51]. Further, the emotional support offered in a team environment may reduce obstacles surrounding a lack of self-efficacy and perceived competence [35,54]. Qualitative evidence suggests supporting these markers of relatedness promotes more autonomously regulated forms of motivation [50].
The findings of this study suggest participants engaging in workplace team sport were motivated by determinants of relatedness such as group cohesion, identity and membership [47].
Evidence has suggested autonomous motivation and long-term exercise adherence are associated with supported needs for relatedness [49]. Further, determinants of relatedness such as cohesion and belonging to a group are known to be effective during the uptake and adherence to an activity [50][51]. The findings of this study add to evidence that suggests relatedness may fill a void prior to the point of complete autonomous motivation and maintenance behaviour [50,51,55].
Therefore, researchers may consider accounting for the presence and impact of relatedness when designing and implementing future programmes. Consistent with recent evidence, balancing work and personal life was an obstacle for participants contemplating participation in workplace team sport [56][57][58]. Parents reported considerable challenges balancing participation in team sport and their role as an employee.
Evidence exploring these challenges has indicated parents attribute their participation in physical activity to feelings of guilt and responsibility [35,57]. The findings of this study however indicate offering team sport across a range of time-points, through autonomy-supportive participation (e.g., flexibility to attend) and accounting of the individual challenges balanced by their employees may improve participation and adherence. Therefore, researchers implementing team sport may wish to tailor not only to the needs of the organisation, but moreover to the personal demands that individual employees negotiate.

The Influence of Organisational Factors
The structure and culture of an organisation influenced the resources assigned to team sport, which therefore created a facilitator or obstacle for participation. Acceptance and support directly from colleagues and line managers, and indirectly from workplace champions and employers positively influenced participation and adherence in team sport. Evidence suggests employees seek understanding, acceptance and support from their colleagues, superiors and employer due to the demands shared by the workforce (e.g., job expectations, workloads) [59]. Further, the findings of the current study reinforce recent evidence exploring the experiences of employees participating in workplace physical activity schemes (i.e., some of which used team sports to promote health) [37][38][39]. These qualitative evaluations suggest a culture of acceptance and support meets needs for relatedness, provides wellbeing and self-efficacy and positively influences participation in team sport [37][38][39].
Employers were perceived by participants in this study to support workplace team sport through a duty of care for the workforce. Discussions within the literature suggest a duty of care is adopted due to the time employees spend in the workplace, pressure from government policy or health recommendations from external health promotion partners [18,60]. Further, in the current study an indirect facilitator to workplace team sport may have been created when the duty of care extended to funding, communicating and managing workplace team sport programmes [60]. Therefore, researchers and practitioners may consider a participatory approach to workplace team sport interventions and programmes [61]. Adopting a participatory approach may secure support for the intervention (i.e., preparation phase), allow the researcher to address specific enablers and barriers (i.e., screening phase), develop the intervention around the necessary support (i.e., action planning phase) and implement the intervention with the required support (i.e., implementation phase) [61].
Further, a participatory approach provides researchers an opportunity to appraise and learn from the interventions implementation and effectiveness [61,62]. Likewise, an employer's willingness to fund, communicate and support workplace health promotion enables a workplace champion or an occupational health team's ability to set-up, manage and deliver team sport [7,36,39,56]. The findings of the current study suggest the presence of these factors can motivate participation in workplace team sport.
Within the organisations sampled, colleagues and superiors did not always directly support team sport. This lack of emotional, network, informational and tangible support might be explained from several organisational, interpersonal and intrapersonal standpoints. Evidence suggests the quantity of work is valued by the employer above the health of employees [59]. Likewise, evidence has suggested as workload increased acceptance for workplace team sport decreased [35]. The findings of this study indicate employees who participated in team sport were perceived as -not working‖ by their colleagues, while employees who -worked non-stop‖ were seen to be productive employees.
In the current study a workplace culture that encouraged participation in team sport, believed in the benefits of physical activity and promoted flexible working. A positive workplace culture is created through the emotional, esteem and network support of colleagues, line managers and employers, and may positively impact on organisational factors such as how team sport is perceived, communicated, funded and managed within a workplace [63,64]. A workplace culture supportive of workplace team sport may influence the motivation, participation and adherence of the workforce through the social support and relatedness provided [35,63,64]. Further, a workplace culture supportive of team sport could be recognised as a method to promote interventions, schemes and programmes, due to its presence within the workplace and influence on individuals in a position of authority [36]. Further, occupational health teams, researchers and practitioners should consider the importance, complexity and influence of the workplace culture during the design and implementation of future health promotion programmes.

The Influence of Environmental Factors
Sporting and changing facilities predisposed participation in workplace team sport. In this study, inaccessible facilities challenged participation, while attainable facilities enabled participation.
Empirical evidence has also demonstrated participation to be positively influenced by the provision of such facilities [25][26][27][28]. A prospective cohort study with Finnish public sector workers found an increased distance to sports facilities challenged participation and reduced physical activity levels, while a shorter attainable distance enabled participation and increased physical activity levels [19].
The current study expands on this evidence by suggesting sports and changing facilities are deemed inaccessible if they are unprofessional, unattainable or challenge the health and safety policy of the organisation. Likewise, evidence has suggested the provision of sports and changing facilities are determined by the level of funding and support within the workplace [65]. The findings of this study indicate the attitudes and decisions of employers may influence the funding available for sports facilities, resources and equipment [66]. Evidence using observational designs suggests employers are guided by beliefs of the benefits of participation, external inputs (e.g., government health promotion policy) and the perceptions and attitudes of their employees [39,67]. While this study was unable collect data from employers, it appears that attitudes shape the perceptions and opinions of key decision makers such as senior leadership team members and managers. If workplace team sport programmes are to be successful and remain sustainable researchers and practitioners must influence the attitudes of employers through raising awareness of the benefits of team sport and influencing the creation of a workplace culture which is supportive of flexible working and physical activity [66,67].
Further, self-presentation to managers, colleagues and clients remained important to participants, and frequently created an obstacle for participants playing and considering participating in workplace team sport. The findings of this study suggest limited changing facilities and the commute to the sports site combined with the attitudes of colleagues and line managers created an additional time based obstacle to participation, where employees were challenged by the time taken to return to work. Social support theory proposes that an individual's wellbeing and self-efficacy for an activity (e.g., team sport) may be supported through emotional, esteem, network, information and tangible support [54]. For workplace team sport programmes to be successfully implemented the working practises and behaviours of employees and line managers should be addressed to provide emotional and network support for participation [54].
The findings of this study indicate, obstacles surrounding sports and changing facilities may be overcome by creating acceptance for extended breaks within the culture of the workplace and exploiting the environment surrounding the organisation (e.g., leisure centres, sports complexes or outdoor spaces) [36]. Further, creating a -novel event‖ such as team sport whereby the environment surrounding the organisation is utilised, may provide relatedness to employees willing to participate due to the social support and cohesion associated [50][51]. It is plausible participation may be improved as relatedness is associated with fostered wellbeing and the adoption of autonomous motivation [49,55].
Further, the findings of this study indicate external sporting organisations (e.g., sports governing bodies, sports partnerships, clubs) may provide tangible and informational support for an organisation promoting workplace team sport [35,54]. The findings of the current study suggest these external sporting organisations provide equipment, resources and knowledge to an organisation, and therefore employers may wish to create networks with these external sporting organisations when implementing workplace team sport.

The Influence of Societal Factors
Participants who chose not to participate in workplace team sport indicated that a negative experience of school sport reduced their perceptions of competence and self-efficacy. The findings of this study support evidence from prospective cohort designs which found the delivery, structure and content of PE influences adult participation in physical activity and sport [68]. Further the findings of this study indicate that the traditional delivery of PE valued performance outcomes (e.g., winning and performance) over the apparent health benefits [68]. This pedagogical tradition driven by education policy and societal attitudes is known to increase intrapersonal obstacles such as reduced self-efficacy and perceptions of a lack of competence [68]. Further, the findings of this study support evidence that suggests, these perceptions negatively influence the current physical activity behaviours of working age adults considering participation in workplace team sport [68,69]. Therefore, it remains important for research to retrospectively understand the extent to which policy and teaching practise shape experiences of school sport and likewise participation in adult life.
Researchers and practitioners using team sport to promote the health of the workforce should consider designing interventions, schemes and programmes that are underpinned by motivation theories such as SDT where an emphasis is placed upon the social environments' influence on competence, relatedness and autonomy [47]. SDT research has suggested perceptions of sport can be positively influenced by the adoption of more autonomy supportive coaching styles [49,53].
Further, perceptions of competence and self-efficacy may be reduced by the inequality driven attitudes of individuals organising and delivering workplace team sport. The current study found, that some workplace champions, although not all, believed that women within their workplace do not enjoy team sports. However, it remains interesting to note that workplace champions reported these attitudes, rather than the six female participants who took part in workplace team sport themselves.
While there were no reports of a -masculine‖ culture within the workplaces sampled, it should be noted that most the participants were male (i.e., 62.5% of team sport participants were male) despite the organisations sampled being a relatively equal split of genders. Participation levels and reports from champions highlight more serious questions of how team sport is promoted to female employees and if inequality exists in workplace health promotion.
Additional organisational obstacles may be created whereby due to perceptions of the demographic of the organisation by decision makers, team sport may be -overlooked‖ and unsupported by the organisation. Therefore, further investigation is required to understand the extent these attitudes shape the sports provisions offered within the workplace. Despite this lack of clarity, these attitudes go a way to explain why female participants in this study reported a lack of self-efficacy and made negative social comparisons surrounding performance with their peer group [70,71]. Therefore, time should be invested in exploring the needs of female employees, and creating re-education strategies for occupational health teams and workplace champions that make workplace team sport appealing to women.

Methodological Considerations
Research exploring workplace team sport has been limited by homogenous samples [24]. This study attempted to addresses this limitation by purposively sampling participants from a range of industries within the UK. While, the sample in this study contained a diverse range of participants unavoidable their perceptions, ideas and opinions may not be representative of all employees.
Further, most of these participants were sampled from large organisations. Therefore, the findings of this study mostly relate to large organisations, a point which should be considered when generalizing the findings. Future research, may wish to explore the facilitators and obstacles faced by employees in smaller organisations. Due to the size of the workforce, and structure and culture of these organisations, it is plausible additional facilitators and obstacles may emerge or be more prominent within the data. Moreover, the data collected in this study lacks the opinions, attitudes and perceptions of employers. On reflection, future research may wish to explore the opinions and attitudes of employers, and should consider this limitation when interpreting the findings of this study.
Likewise, no inactive participants volunteered to take part in this study. Moreover, the participants in this study considered themselves to be physically active and some of the samples were employed as health professionals within the promotion of sport and health. It is likely employees with an interest in sport or working within health promotion may face different barriers to inactive employees and may have a vested interest in participation [35]. For example, given the importance of competence and self-efficacy, it is plausible an employee who has not participated in team sport for a substantial period of time may face or perceived there to be greater challenges regarding the adoption of sports specific skills (e.g., passing the ball in soccer) than an employee who is already active or promoting sport within their job role. Furthermore, a workplace involved in the promotion of sport may provide social support for participation in a more meaningful way than a largely inactive workplace. Likewise, an environment and culture promoting participation in team sport may have consistent reminders to remain be active and participate in physical activity and therefore participation in team sport may be more socially acceptable than in a workplace which is largely inactive. Therefore, future research should consider exploring the barriers inactive employees face when negotiating participation in workplace team sport and examining the physical activity behaviour of employees participating in workplace team sport.

Conclusions and Implications for Future Research and Practice
This study explored the complexity of participating in workplace team sport. Qualitative research exploring the facilitators and obstacles faced by employees participating in workplace team sport is lacking and therefore challenging the implementation of programmes. Findings indicate participation in workplace team sport is influenced by interlinking intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational, environmental and societal factors.
While the findings of this study share some similarities with previous evidence [34][35][36][37][38][39], an emphasis should be placed upon tailoring team sport to the needs and demands of the organisation and the employees which work within them. If team sport is to become a prevalent method of workplace health promotion, researchers must seek to influence the management, structure and culture of organisations. Accounting for these factors through case study designs may provide employees the support to participate in their workplace and additional insight into the challenges employers face when promoting team sport.
Further, the complexity of supporting an employee's experience of workplace team sport must be accounted for. Supporting basic needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness during workplace team sport is known to be associated with fostered wellbeing and autonomous motivation [49][50][51]. Therefore, researchers may wish to integrate the support basic needs into the designs of their interventions, schemes and programmes.
To understand if the findings of this study are consistent across a working age population, an intervention is required. A participatory approach would provide an understanding of the specific facilitators and obstacles encountered by participants and therefore allow researchers to tailor the intervention towards the necessary and required support [61,62]. Whilst an intervention guided by SDT has the potential to train workplace champions in providing autonomy support, which is known to support basic needs [49]. The findings of the current study and past research support the use of this approach [49][50][51].