Kevin Coombs / Reuters
- People working from home stand less than one hour per workday, a survey found.
- Lack of movement plus poor posture from home setups can lead to health issues.
- Alan Hedge, an ergonomics expert, recommends a mix of sitting, standing, and moving.
You might think you're sitting pretty if you get to work from home. Turns out you might be sitting pretty much all day.
A survey of US workers found that those who log on from home tend to stand for less than an hour during the workday. And more than one in three remote workers say they only get up for 10 minutes or less until it's time to sign off.
By comparison, the average worker — including those who head into the office — stands for about 101 minutes, according to the findings from MyBioSource, which sells supplies used in biological and medical research. The survey of 1,000 workers took place in mid-January.
Much of the debate in recent years about where workers do their jobs often centers on areas like collaboration, productivity, and achieving a work-life balance. Some work-from-home evangelists say being remote gives them more time to hit the gym or walk at lunch. Yet the survey findings signal that rolling out of bed and into a home office could dent some workers' health.
"If you look at people working at home, you'll find that they are not as active as they otherwise would be," Alan Hedge, a professor emeritus in the Department of Human Centered Design at Cornell University, told Business Insider.
Hedge, who has studied workplace ergonomics for decades and wasn't involved in the survey, said the challenge with working from home isn't just about how long people sit or stand. Many workers are also likely maintaining poor posture by sitting on a couch, at a table, or on a bed. He added that, too often, workers look down at a laptop or phone, causing up to a sixfold increase in strain on their necks.
"It's critical that you don't just think in terms of time here — that you think in terms of working in a healthy posture," Hedge said.
After about 20 minutes, it's time to get up
Hedge recommends workers follow this approach: 20 minutes sitting with good posture, eight minutes standing — maybe at a standing desk — and then two minutes of standing and moving.
For a workday that lasts seven and a half hours, this translates to five hours of sitting, two hours of standing, and a half hour of moving. Critically, he said, the regimen results in 16 transitions when people go from sitting to standing and standing to sitting. He said research by NASA found that number of ups and downs was beneficial.
Hedge said the recommendation for standing for eight minutes reflects that many people begin to lean after too much longer. That can result in bad posture, even for someone using a standing desk.
In general, he said, what's more important than the specific numbers is to build a pattern of moving into the workday.
Movement can boost productivity
All of this moving around raises obvious questions about getting work done. Some workers feel pressure to remain welded to their laptops because they have so much to do. But Hedge said breaks — including time not spent staring at a screen — are essential and can boost productivity and creativity.
In the survey, more than one in four workers said they didn't go outside during the workday. Getting fresh air can reduce stress and fatigue.
Hedge said more employers need to encourage their people to learn what he calls a pattern of moving. The idea is to build activities like standing into our day so they become as routine as pouring a coffee in the morning. Learning to take breaks and move as part of the natural course of a workday is more effective, Hedge said, than screen pop-ups or a nudge from a smartwatch that it's time to get up.
"Eventually, people do feel, 'Boy, this technology is nagging me.' And they begin to ignore it," he said.
Workers, or their employers, don't have to spend as much as they once did on the tools needed to work safely, Hedge said, because prices for equipment that can give an ergonomic boost have come down.
"You need the right pattern of movement. You need the right products that you're going to work with, and you need the right postures to work in," he said. "If you can get pattern, product, posture all synchronized, you will never have a problem. And you'll be highly productive."