Standing Desks May Improve Health and Productivity

Standing desks have become a hot topic in recent years, with many companies and individual workers making the transition to them. Of course, there's a good reason for this trend: the general belief is that using a standing desk offers greater health benefits when compared to traditional sitting desks, allowing workers to burn calories while they work. But a new study has found that standing desks may also boos worker productivity.

According to the study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M University’s Health Science Center School of Public Health, employees who use standing desks are more productive than their counterparts who use traditional sitting desks. For the study, researchers monitored some 167 employees who work in a Texas-based telemarketing firm six months. After just one month, the group of employees who used standing desks were 23% more successful in their sales calls when compared to the group of employees who used traditional desks. What's really impressive, however, is that after the six months were over, the standing desk workers were 53% more successful in their sales calls.

"When my doctoral student first came to me [with the numbers], I said, ‘You’ve made a mistake. This just isn’t possible,’ ” said Mark Benden, one of the study's lead authors. "They are measured at every second of every day. . . . Every one of those successful phone calls in the call center has a dollar value associated with it.”

How is something as simple as a standing desk able to have such a profound impact on worker productivity? That question remains unanswered at this time, although some experts attribute it to the cardiovascular effects of standing. When sitting, your blood flow slows, which can subsequently slow down your metabolism and reaction times. On the other hand, standing has the opposite effect by encouraging greater blood flow along with a faster metabolism and reaction times.

Regardless of the correlation, there's strong evidence indicating that standing desks are beneficial for both health and productivity purposes. Other studies have also found standing desks to reduce the risk of certain types of diseases and illnesses. So whether you're looking to ward off illness or improve your daily productivity, you should consider making the switch to a standing desk.

These findings were published in the journal IIE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors.