Elsevier

Public Health

Volume 144, March 2017, Pages 16-22
Public Health

Original Research
The potential of bike desks to reduce sedentary time in the office: a mixed-method study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2016.11.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Participants cycled for approximately 98 min/week.

  • Most participants spoke positively about the bike desk and would continue using them.

  • People experienced a positive effect on attention, motivation and work performance.

  • Participants felt more energetic and more self-confident.

  • The intervention positively influenced participants' lifestyle.

Abstract

Objectives

To investigate the use of bike desks in an office setting and office workers' experiences of bike desks.

Study design

Mixed-method study; quantitative data of cycling desk use in combination with qualitative data of users’ experience were obtained via questionnaires.

Methods

Bike desks were provided in an office setting during a five-month period. The amount of cycled time, distance and the cycling intensity were registered. At the end of the intervention period, participants filled out a questionnaire about their experiences of cycling desks in the office.

Results

Participants cycled for approximately 98 min/week. Most participants were very positive about their bike desk experience and almost all of them would continue using them. About one third of the participants experienced a positive effect on attention and work performance and for about two thirds it positively influenced their motivation during work. Furthermore, about half of the participants felt more energetic, more self-confident and perceived a positive effect on their health and lifestyle.

Conclusions

Providing bike desks in an office reduces office workers sedentary time. Furthermore, people experienced positive effects on several personal and work-related parameters. Therefore, providing bike desks in office settings seems to be a promising means to reduce sedentary time.

Introduction

Insufficient physical activity combined with prolonged sedentary time (often occurring in the workplace) may increase risk of chronic disease and mental health problems.1, 2 Direct and indirect costs of physical inactivity to society are estimated to be about €150–300 per citizen per year.3, 4, 5 Worldwide, 31.1% of all people aged 15 years and older are physically inactive6 and prolonged sitting has been engineered into our lives across many settings, including transportation, the workplace and the home.1 Recently, interrupting sedentary time and integrating physical activity at the office has gained attention.7 One of the possibilities to offer office workers the opportunity to move during work is the implementation of active workstations. These allow people to incorporate low intensity physical activity into normally sedentary desk tasks. Longitudinal studies on active workstations showed improvements in physical health (reduction in body weight, waist and hip circumference, fat percentage, low density lipoprotein) and mental health (stress, job satisfaction).8, 9, 10, 11, 12 The question rises if implementing active workstations in an office setting is a feasible method of reducing sedentary time. Will people use them, do people like using them etc? It has been shown that providing standing or treadmill desks in an office setting decreases employees sedentary time at work.13, 14, 15, 16 Using standing desks was associated with improved overall sense of well-being, mood states, reductions in upper back and neck pain, fatigue and confusion. People felt more energized, healthier, more focused, more productive happier and less stressed.11 Standing desk users did not experience any effect on productivity.17, 18 Also the use of treadmill desks positively influenced peoples energy levels, weight, mood, stress levels and tiredness.12, 15, 19 In the study of Thompson et al.,12 people did not experience any effect on their productivity while in the study of Tudor-Locke et al.15 a positive effect on productivity was reported. Sliter et al.20 compared the acute experience of people when using a sitting, standing, walking and cycling desk. They showed that participants experienced higher arousal and less boredom in the walking and the cycling conditions compared to the seated and standing conditions. Stress levels were lower while walking than while sitting or standing whereas no difference between cycling, sitting or standing was observed. Task satisfaction was only higher when walking than when standing while no difference between walking and sitting or cycling, standing and sitting was seen. However, to our knowledge, the use of bike desks in an office setting and the experience of office workers on the long-term have not yet been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate: (1) the use of a bike desk in the office over a five-month time period (quantitative); and (2) the participants' experiences of bike desks through the use of an open-ended questionnaire (qualitative).

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were recruited in the Brussels affiliation of the human resources company Securex, Belgium. All employees received an e-mail with information about the study and were invited to an information session in which more profound information was given and questions were answered. Inclusion criteria were, having a sedentary occupation (min 75% of the workday) and participating in physical activity for maximum 2.5 h per week. Exclusion criteria were the presence of attention deficit

Descriptives

Mean values ± SD for height, body weight, BMI, fat percentage, waist circumference and VO2peak at baseline are displayed in Table 2. Mean VO2 peak was 34.0 ± 8.5 ml/kg/min for the male and 26.9 ± 3.7 ml/kg/min for the female participants, which for both sexes corresponds to P20 according to the ACSMs guidelines for exercise testing and prescription.25 Data about changes in health-related parameters, including anthropometrics and aerobic fitness, can be found in the paper ‘Bike desks in the

Discussion

This study aimed at investigating the feasibility of implementing bike desks in the office to reduce sedentary time. Participants had an average cycle time of 98.1 ± 55.3 min per week, covered 27.3 ± 17.4 km per week and had an average power output of 55.8 ± 18.3 Watts. After the first four weeks, a significant drop in cycled time and distance was observed. Thereafter, both parameters remained stable. This first drop could be explained by the initial novelty of the bike desks in the office

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the human resource company Securex for their participation in this experiment. The authors also thank the master students J.D.Conics, L.B. and K.M. for their help with the data acquisition. Furthermore, the authors thank Y.D. for the technical support.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (B.U.N. 143201318930). All participants signed an informed consent before participating in the experiment.

Funding

None declared.

Competing interests

None declared.

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