There’s always been a rivalry between the East Coast and the West Coast over quality-of-life issues. But a new survey asked a new question: “Where do workers spend the most time sitting—right coast or left?”
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A recent geographic comparisons survey of work space design elements has found that individuals on the West Coast are spending an hour more per day sitting than their Northeastern counterparts.
The survey of almost 500 respondents by ESI Ergonomic Solutions and Russell Research found that out of an 8-hour workday, employees on the West Coast reported an average of 5.4 hours sitting at their desks, says a press release. Workers in the Northeast reported 4.4 hours—1 hour less than the West!
According to the Association for Psychological Science (APS) website, workers in typical office jobs may spend more than 10 hours a day sitting down. Workers on assembly lines may also be seated at their workstations. And, extensive sitting has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and even early death.
How much sitting is too much? Michael Trenell, professor of metabolism and lifestyle medicine at Newcastle University in England, said in the Journal of Hepatology “that current literature cannot inform us how much sitting is too much. We just know that it is better to sit less than to sit more,” according to Yahoo! News.
So what can employers do to get employees off their backsides? The APS says a study at King’s College in London showed the most promising interventions against excessive sitting included:
- Educating people about the hazards of sitting,
- Providing sit/stand desks, and
- Utilizing goals for tracking time spent sitting.
Ironically, the interventions that tended to be the least successful were the ones that attempted to reduce sitting by motivating people to engage in more physical activity, generally. To reduce sitting, employers need to specifically target sitting!