Every once in a while we decide to upgrade our office. Sometimes this means buying whiteboards or better monitors but this time it's a little more drastic.
A good working environment improves productivity as everybody knows about now. The same goes for our office. We introduced clean desk policy, which integrates nicely with our paperless office, we exchanged our Ikea deskchairs for a better type and we changed our Dell 24" screens for Apple Cinema Displays. However our latest office improvement is probably a less known improvement. We exchanged our old desks for brand new desks that allow you to work while sitting on your desk chair as well as standing at the desk.
"So standing at a desk.. How is that an improvement?" You might wonder. Well here are some of the benefits that we have noticed so far.
- Improved back muscles: If you stand up you force yourself to be in a more natural posture. Your back muscles are being trained so less back problems because of stronger back muscles.
- Improved focus: Harder to explain but everybody at the office has noticed an improvement in focus when standing up.
- Easier pair programming: When you stand you consume less space compared to sitting down so for your pair partner it becomes easier to look on your screen while remaining a 90 degrees angle on the monitor yourself.
If you become tired of standing up it's no problem to lower your desk again and sit down. The desk uses an electrical motor to move the desk up and down so there is no hassle whatsoever. The desk goes as low as 65cm and as high as 128cm so unless you are 220cm or taller this should work for you.
At our office most people vary throughout the day. They stand part of the day and sit the other part. You might notice some fatigue after standing up for eight hours straight or some pain in your backmuscles the next day, that's probably an indication you have been pushing it a bit too much.
Of course the desks function very well for leaning with a beer as well...
