Workers Take A Stand As Evidence Mounts Against Sitting

Employer Enthusiasm

Some employers are enthusiastic about the devices. Schermer Inc., a marketing agency in Minneapolis, is pushing to get all of its employees on standing desks soon, and large companies such as Raytheon Co. have made standing desks an option for all employees through its wellness program.

“There was some reluctance -- people thought it was a goofy apparatus to have mounted to your desk,” Chris Schermer, the marketing agency’s president, said in a phone interview. Almost two-thirds of his employees have them now. “Over time their curiosity won out over skepticism.”

Businesses in the U.S. do have obligations to accommodate seating needs of workers with back problems significant enough to be considered a disability, according to Ann Kiernan, a labor lawyer in New Brunswick, New Jersey. But broader rules from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration regulating seating for non-disabled workers were quashed by House Republicans over a decade ago, she said.

Hunched Over

The regulations have made employers willing to find solutions for people with documented ailments. For Chris Blattman, an assistant professor at Columbia University, standing was a necessity. Stressed out and hunched over a laptop for long hours to get tenure, Blattman was having back problems and his doctors said one way to avoid the pain was standing while working. After Blattman submitted his doctors’ papers, Columbia’s human resource department signed off and bought him a desk that cost more than $3,000.

“It was only later that I found out that it was maybe three times as expensive as some of the other solutions,” Blattman said in a phone interview. “I personally think that any of the sit-stand desks would have been completely fine.”

Tyrrell is now working from home for another company. He said his attempts to get his new employer to buy him a standing desk haven’t worked. So this time around, he sprung for an expensive desk -- an electrically adjustable one made by the Human Solution.

“We’re all pretty cognizant that we’re all office drones sitting around all day,” he said. “Anything you can do to improve your health is pretty much a no-brainer.”