How much time do you spend sitting?

Bright lights, computer monitor and you

There has been a recent study done in the United States. It has found that the full time employees of large companies will spend an average of 2/3 of their working hours in a sitting position. Do you find this surprising?

What has been found is that if you are a full-time employee of a company with 1,000 or more employees then you spend an average of 21 hours a week at your desk, three hours in meetings and four hours per week seated at your home. This totals up to 28 hours of an average workweek of 37 to 42 hours. This adds up to about seven hours per day and usually six of those hours are at a computer or a mobile device. Is this typical of your day?

It is interesting that female employees tend to spend more time each week working in front of a computer or via mobile device than do men (an average of more then four hours per week).

If you are a college graduates and/or have a household income of $75,000 or more then you are more likely to sit in front of a computer for work. It is the college graduates who do not like spending so much of their time sitting while working. There is only about 27% of all employees who are happy with the amount of time that they spend sitting while on the job.

Would you like to have a work station or desk that would adapt to your working sitting or standing? About 67% of the people polled said they would strongly agree to that change. Women are more open to that type of change then men. When asked, 60% of workers think that their production would improve if they had a choice on working standing or sitting.

Older employees (over 55 years-old) were not as keen as the younger employees (those under 35) about using this type of workstation. Fully 81% of the employees who want their employers to offer standing/sitting workstations think that their productivity would increase.

Another consideration is that some of the stiffness, neck aches and back aches might be reduced with an option to stand and work. Women are more likely to seek medical care due to the discomfort caused by their work environment.

It is something to be considered as our health care costs soar even when claims go through group insurance for physiotherapy, chiropractic and stress related disorders. If a physical change in the environment would make a difference it would help reduce the cost of lost time days for distressed employees. Sometimes a big problem has a simple and effective solution. What do you think?

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