Often when we talk about sitting less, people get concerned about productivity. There’s a belief that to maximize work performance, you’ve got to be doing your work seated. However, just because you are standing up, sitting less, and moving more doesn’t mean your work productivity will decrease. Research often begins in the laboratory so let’s start there too. In one laboratory study, researchers found no differences in cognition when comparing standing to sitting. No differences were also found when examining computer mouse and keyboard performance. In terms of actual productivity measures, improvements have been shown when sitting was broken up with standing in a simulated office environment. Of course, work productivity in the laboratory might be different than productivity in your office. So, what happens when we look at productivity measured in actual workplaces? Overall, research has found that standing desks do not impact work productivity (examples 1, 2, and 3). In fact, in a recent study, we found some employees felt productivity actually improved! It’s not so cut and dry, though. Individual variability and job specific work tasks influence how much standing workstations impact productivity. It can take 2 weeks to adjust to a new workstation but standing can still…
