People with desk jobs want to move more, a new study suggests.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how long desk-based workers actually want to sit, stand, walk and be physically active,” said study lead author Birgit Sperlich. She’s a post-doctoral researcher at German Sport University Cologne.
Sperlich and her colleagues interviewed 614 people with desk jobs in Germany and found that they spent an average of 73% of their working day sitting down. Meanwhile, only 10% of the day was spent standing, 13% was spent walking and a mere 4% was spent doing physically demanding tasks.
But the workers said they wanted to spend 54% of their work day sitting down, 15% standing, 23% walking, and almost 8% doing physically demanding tasks.
“So far, most plans to increase physical activity in the workplace primarily focus on health outcomes without asking the target group what they prefer,” Sperlich said in a journal news release.