Standing desks have no effect on productivity, boffins find

Not Your Average Office Environment

I don't think they tested productivity in the right sort of setting. Call centre workers are pushed to the absolute limit no matter what kind of desk they have. You spend a whole working day with your mind separated from your body as you talk back and forth and record details on keyboard without thinking about it. Being really uncomfortable doesn't much impact productivity.

Let's see how productivity is affected when you test the sort of environment where a comfortable Airon chair is an invitation to tip back with feet up and browse the Internet with the mouse. At a standing desk, you'll remain alert and your full range of tools and supplies are always within hand's reach.

One last thing is that the article's title almost sounds negative about standing desks. Spin it a different way and you could have said that the healthier desks did not *impact* productivity, so readers see that it's an advantage.

Another management motivation for standing...

More cubicles can be squeezed into the same space.

Personal experience

I've got a sprained sacroiliac joint from sitting down too much (20 years of sitting 8-9 hours a day at a work desk with not enough breaks from sitting). I'd also got a bit of a pot belly & high cholesterol.

Then about 7 years ago, I started working from home & mounted a monitor at standing eye level with a cheap £11 adjustable arm above my desk. I also added a small foldable stand fashioned from some left over wooden flooring planks for the keyboard and mouse. Voila, I had my own home brew convertible stand up / sit down workstation.

I can report that my sacroiliac problem is a lot better (although it seems it might always be a bit of a weak spot after all the prolonged abuse it suffered in the past), the pot belly has disappeared & cholesterol levels are pretty much normal. & yes, I do feel better in myself.

Yes, I have been more productive, but it's hard to say if that's a result of not being in a noisy open plan office so fewer distractions, or whether some of its down to the better health. Probably a bit of both, but everyone's different so ymmv obviously.

Now sitting and working in the sun makes me definitely more productive. I wonder how much better it would be if I stood up & worked in the sun? But that's a whole different topic...

It seems a bit early to pass judgement

Any study needs to take years and any effects (or lack of) are going to be felt years down the line (bad back, digestive system, etc...). If it only makes you feeling better while working it's worth it just for that.

Convertible desks that allow you to sit or stand

move along, nothing new here (google "office" in youporn.com to see all variations).

I've love a sit-stand desk

There are 6 of us in my role using a couple of desks 24x7 and we like things in slightly different positions (oo-er!) - I'd love to be abel to easily adjust the desk and monitor heighta for periods of standing and sitting. Sadly I think I am the only one who likes the idea of standing up once in a while.

“little is known about the impact of sit-stand desks on actual worker productivity in a real-world setting.”

“This is an evidence gap which needs to be addressed before organizations invest in sit-stand desks as a measure for preventing chronic disease and promoting wellness in their workforce.”

I am guessing it's the way it's written and a comprehension fail on my part but otherwise, they do realise that those things do not exactly correlate don't they?

Anyway I think moving around helps somewhat as well, I was told its movement that tends to persaude your joints to pump/move synovial fluid about, likewise it helps your kidneys stop producing stones. (plumbers have told me that there's lots of sludge in call centre and office toilets, the start of kidney stones that come around from sitting all day).

I thought the point of standing desks was to improve health, not to improve productivity.

I hope there are still a few bosses who consider their staff as people rather than as productivity units.

My own desk is good ...

... it's even better because I can wander around my office while trying to get idiots with zero clue off the telephone ;-)

I guess all the people going on about having to have raise the hight of cubical walls to block the noise of people standing on other calls have never worked in a call centre, and are probably american.

Most call centres don't have cubicles, in Europe, and Asia at least, as cubicle walls take up space, that could be user for more staff, and generally make the place feel very poky and small. Its the same with most offices too you just have to have some consideration for others, not a strong point of our american friends. It would be horrible to have to work in a 2 x 2 x 2 meter cube, open plan may not be perfect but its got to be better than cube farm.

I fecking HATE open plan

"For some of us - open plan just does not work and while that may be unpalatable to the office planners and the bean counters, they ignore it at the risk of lost productivity."

Indeed. I provide legal advice on complex matters of information law compliance and I work in a room full of techy gobshites who can apparently only communicate by SHOUTING! at each other, utterly ruining my ability to do the kind of deep considerative work I need to do, day after day.

I could be MASSIVELY more productive if I had peace and quiet - but that'd involve spending money (and accepting just how wrong open plan can be), and HM Gov won't be having that...

Open plan

Great for the bean-counters.

Fucking crap for the poor office-minions.

Hate it, hate, it hate it.

Especially the open plan machine rooms with photocopies going all day.

Nothing new, here

There's nothing new in standing up, at work. I started work in a factory, as an apprentice. There, sitting down at work was not only not an option, it was specifically not allowed. Later, I moved to one of the drawing offices. There you had a high stool, unpadded and unbacked, only to find that it was not possible to sit and work on a drawing board at the same time. The only sitting you did was when working on calculations (long hand). Even the foremen, who spent a lot of time writing, had a stand up desk, in the middle of the machine shop, amid the noise and dirt. They could not argue that they couldn't hear anyone on the 'phone, since there were none.

"This made it possible to measure call handling time, time spent talking, time spent on hold and time spent wrapping up calls, metrics call centres love to harvest"

Metrics which have a common factor of being easy to measure. Calls closed to callers satisfaction? Far too difficult to measure, possibly too embarrassing for management to be aware of but the only real measure of a call centre's effectiveness.

fat boss

It's not about productivity.

It's about health and wellbeing.

But the boss doesn't give a shit about your wellbeing only productivity.

Misses the point a bit

If you're chained to your desk, it doesn't make much difference if you're standing or sitting I would have thought. I bet all those people who have standing desks in their home office can also wander out to the kitchen and make a cup of tea any time they like. I believe the research is already in on that, what helps is to stand up and actually walk around for five minutes; it seems to work for me.

Bah!

And what is the percentage of increased incidence of standees being targeted with balls of paper, rubber bands and Nerf darts? Why am I always having to point out the serious deficiencies in these so-called studies?

Wrong control group

Having been both first-line tech and a programmer, I can tell you that first-line can be relatively active, for a job that nominally involves sitting around with your ear glued to a phone. Every time you switch from one context to another (e.g. from call logging suite to third-party diagnostic portal), you shift a little in your seat. And then you might get out of your seat completely to go and ask the supervisor for advice. All this only happens 3-4 times a day, but my back tells me it makes all the difference, in comparison to sitting down, "getting into the zone", and not moving at all above the elbows until lunchtime.