Office workers are often reminded of the importance of taking regular breaks from their desks to get up and walk around.
Employers are eager to keep their workers fit and healthy, and avoid sedentary lifestyles causing bad backs, poor circulation and other posture-related ailments.
At one US company, bosses are taking a more innovative approach in a bid to prevent desk-related aches and pains among their workers.
Groupon has introduced standing desks, where employees are able to work on their computer or speak on the phone without sitting down.
Sales analyst Joel Hadley is one of the workers currently taking advantage of a standing desk.
He told the Chicago Tribune that standing up makes him feel alert, focused and energised, which has an impact on overall productivity levels.
Mr Hadley said he now has less back and neck pain than when he used a chair.
According to the news provider, hundreds of companies are now giving employees the option of working in this way.
Major blue-chip organisations including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Google are among those taking advantage of the technology, it claimed.
Inactivity researcher Marc Hamilton, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, warned that many employees are living with a stalled metabolic rate as a result of sitting down too long.
“It was a huge oversight to ever think traditional forms of exercise, such as hopping on your treadmill for a few hours a week, can provide the specific antidote to spending 140 hours a week resting,” he claimed.
“Sitting too much isn’t the same as exercising too little.”
