Right Choices at Workplace: Sitting vs Standing?

Sedentary lifestyles, the myth of IT jobs, and all work and no play makes Jack a dull employee — we’ve heard it all. Actions were taken, myths broken, changes were around the corner, but nothing lasted long. The question still stands strong, quite literally — “Is Standing at work, the right way to work?”

Having our expertise lie within the niche domain of Corporate Wellness, we decided to take this challenging question head on.

As good managers always quote, “Let’s start the meeting with what is good and then we move on to what we can improve”, we will follow our fellow managers approach and start our discussion in the same line of thought -

Why Standing Workstations are recommended:

1. Standing workstations are recommended because it is the most natural thing to do rather than sitting for 8 hours. Rewind back to the early centuries, our ancestors were known for being hunters, gatherers; and the revolution of technology just tied us down to our workstations.
2. Each time you sign up on a fitness app, they ask you how active are you and unknowingly we mark ourselves as either ‘Active, Moderately Active, etc.’ The reality is our office sitting points us to being sedentary for 77% of the time in office.
3. Standing workstations also are known to improve your posture and thus reduces probability of having shoulder, back and neck aches.
4. What I love most about a standing desk is that it makes you feel energetic throughout a day and indeed is a most effective way of working at office.
5. Independent of regular exercise, standing and working resulted in slimmer waists, lower BMIs and lower fat and blood sugar levels. A study showed that people who had the most breaks in their sedentary time had a waistline an average of 5.95cm slimmer than those with the least breaks: Breaks in Sedentary Time

Why Standing Workstations are NOT recommended:

1. If you are an employer who will never compromise on the quality when it comes to your employee, then it might become a costly affair for you to setup standing workstations.
2. It typically takes 2 weeks to your body to get adjusted to standing and understanding the right amount of time. Leg/feet soreness will also follow with longer standing hours. And just FYI — You should definitely not stand for 8 hours straight, there are adverse health effects of that too.
3. If you work involves a lot of reading and writing, I don’t know if you will enjoy standing for long hours and reading. It is at times more comfortable for you to sit and analyze and read pages after pages of the project files.
4. With most of the offices moving to the Open Workstations Concepts, I honestly think our attention span can get affected and it will be difficult to concentrate for a longer period of time on anything because you can constantly see your colleagues all the time.

Having mentioned the pros and cons of a standing workstation, we at FeetApart would honestly recommend everyone to combine the posture of standing and sitting while working and using the correct ergonomics for both. And hey, don’t forget to sneak those 5 min workout tips that we often mention on our social media pages for you to effectively change the curve of you being dull and inactive to actually being active at workplace.

Also our corporate gurus quote — “In India, if you are typically clocking-in 9–11 hours on a daily basis, then Standing Workstations are Not Meant for you.”

If you want to adopt a workstation that gives the flexibility to alternate between standing and sitting, I would honestly tell you to keep glued on and read our next blog on ‘Setting up the Right Workstation.’ Also, if you have comments, suggestions or just some love for US, please do write back to us and we will love to connect with you.

Till then, keep working and keep working out!