The Effects of Walking While Working on Productivity and Health: A Field Experiment

Abstract

La sèrie Documents de treball d'economia de l'empresa presenta els avanços i resultats d'investigacions en curs que han estat presentades i discutides en aquest departament; això no obstant, les opinions són responsabilitat dels autors. El document no pot ser reproduït total ni parcialment sense el consentiment de l'autor/a o autors/res. Dirigir els comentaris i suggerències directament a l'autor/a o autors/res, a la direcció que apareix a la pàgina següent.A Working Paper in the Documents de treball d'economia de l'empresa series is intended as a mean whereby a faculty researcher's thoughts and findings may be communicated to interested readers for their comments. Nevertheless, the ideas put forwards are responsibility of the author. Accordingly a Working Paper should not be quoted nor the data referred to without the written consent of the author. Please, direct your comments and suggestions to the author, which address shows up in the next page. AbstractLack of physical activity can cause health problems and diminish organizational productivity. We conducted a 12-months long field experiment in a financial services company to study the effects of slow-moving treadmills outfitted for office work on employee productivity and health. 43 sedentary volunteers were assigned randomly to two groups to receive treadmill workstations 7 months apart. Employees could opt at will for standard chair-desk arrangement. Biometric measurements were taken quarterly and weekly online performance surveys were administered to study participants and to more than 200 non-participants and their supervisors.In this study we explore three questions concerning the effects of the introduction of treadmills in the workplace.(1) Does it improve overall physical activity? (2) Does it improve health measures? (3) Does it improve performance?The answers are as follows. (1) (Brownell, 1995; Hughes et al., 2007). In addition, obesity and related negative health outcomes increase health care costs (Aldana, 2001;Golaszewski, 2001) and reduce worker performance (Ricci and Chee, 2005; Bates et al., 2008;Goetzel et al., 2010). Conversely, the effect of physical activity on health is unequivocally positive for all levels of intensity and duration; the greatest health improvements due to additional activity occur among individuals who have the lowest baseline levels of physical activity (Powell, Paluch and Blair 2011).There is therefore an individual and public interest in engaging greater numbers of people in physical activity. Alas, physical activity is not a free good: it frequently costs time and money, and for most people it is probably a source of direct disutility. Because of a combination of ignorance, preferences, externalities and unrealistically high time discount rates, most individuals engage in a level of physical activity below that deemed by many observers as individually and socially optimal.Physical activity may be part of normal daily activities as a natural by-product of other activities and at no additional cost, such as physical...