Standing Desks for Remote Work & WFH
At some point, remote working becomes more than just a temporary arrangement or a few evenings with a laptop in your actual lap. As aches and pains creep in, you may be drawn to something a little more official, or a little more ergonomic, for your working space. The time might be right to consider a standing desk.
Are standing desks effective for home offices?
In traditional office settings, the landscape has changed in recent years. Sit stand desks have become the top workplace wellness perk, with desks of varying heights replacing the old sea of standard office desks. It stands to reason that this top wellness perk can be a game changer at home as well.
Negative effects of sitting while working from home
The increasingly sedentary lifestyles of workers around the globe are known to be associated with higher rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and more. And our growing tendency to sit all day can be just as bad while working from home as it is in the office. In many cases, it’s much worse.
According to the Society of Human Resource Managers, many home office workers report working longer hours at their screens. In fact, 45% of office workers who transitioned to remote work during the pandemic reported that they work more hours than before. And a study in the Journal of Occupational Health revealed that workers who found themselves sitting more were also twice as likely to say that their job performance had also suffered.
Remote workers often report even more aches and pains than office workers. In a corporate office, it’s pretty common to have a somewhat ergonomic setup, with a dedicated office chair and office desks designed to allow ergonomic postures. At home, nearly anything can function as a desk and a chair, and it’s easy to get in the habit of working wherever space allows. It doesn’t take long to develop symptoms like headaches, back and hip pain, eye strain, and carpal tunnel from working in less-than-ideal conditions.
Treat your home office as an office
The simplest solution for these aches and pains, and key to making a long-term success of working from home, is to remember to treat your home office as an office. That can mean many things, including:
- Employing ways to keep home distractions to a minimum
- Maintaining a set work schedule
- Using actual office furniture, like an ergonomic office chair and a home office adjustable standing desk
Working from home has its rewards, but it also brings the challenge of creating boundaries to keep work from creeping into all areas of your life. By treating your home office as an office, you can create a mental break between business and leisure time. And having a dedicated, comfortable “work” space often allows you to increase focus and efficiency.
Benefits of standing while working from home
A simple remedy like a home standing desk is one way to maintain a healthier balance between sitting and standing time. Some of the benefits that standing desk users report include:
- Increased focus and productivity
- Reduced aches and pains from sitting for long periods
- Improved mood
Can remote or WFH workers still request a standing desk from work?
As remote work has become a larger share of the workforce, the idea of requesting a stand up desk for home office work has become mainstream. Companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook are known for offering a $1000 stipend for remote work expenses, including desks. As an employee-centered benefit, home office stipends allow workers to purchase things they will actually use, like an ergonomic home office desk. Whether your employer offers a remote office stipend or simply provides some of the tools to do your job, requesting a standing desk from work can be a fairly straightforward ask.
What are the best remote or home office friendly standing or adjustable desks?
The qualities that make the best home standing desk are similar to the qualities that you might seek in any standing desk:
- Durability. Durability is important for adjustable desks, because cheaply made desks can be flimsy or wobbly when they move up or down. Look for commercial grade desks made with quality materials. The best stand up desks for home use are designed to meet the BIFMA X5.5 standard for commercial furniture.
- Ergonomic adjustment range. Make sure the desk can accommodate your height, and that it offers easy, quiet adjustment from sitting to standing.
- Design. A home standing desk is likely to be visible from other areas of your daily living space, at least some of the time. For that reason, a minimalist design, with color options that blend with the rest of your space, is even more important at home.
- Size. The standard size desk surface that works well in the office environment is often different from what works well in your space at home. Perhaps you need a smaller desk to tuck a desk into the corner of a room. Or maybe you have a whole dedicated room to spread out, so you can indulge in a large standing desk for multiple monitors.
What type of standing desks are the easiest to use in a home office?
Standing desks can be divided into a few basic types – fixed standing desks, standing desk converters, and sit to stand desks (manual, electric, or pneumatic). You could throw in the homemade version of each of these types, which can be as simple as a stack of large books under the laptop on the kitchen table, or as fancy as a quality engineered height-adjustable desk base paired with your own existing work surface.
The easiest standing desks to use in a home office are generally the sit-to-stand type that allow for full adjustment. An adjustable desk allows you to alternate between sitting and standing postures within the same work area. Adjustable desks also offer greater comfort and surface area than their less-appealing cousins, the sit-to-stand converters. The easiest sit stand desks for home use have a powered lifting mechanism – either pneumatic or electric – to provide the smoothest and quickest adjustments from sitting to standing.
The best way to know whether a home office standing desk makes a difference for your lifestyle is to try one for about a month. It can take some time to get used to standing, so experiment with the sitting and standing intervals that work best for you. The Standing Desk’s 30 day risk free offer makes it simple to see if a home office standing desk is right for you.
