Promoting worker wellness through office design

Besides creating a workspace that will fit your staff’s work needs, some offices are focusing on improving worker wellness as well.

Office furniture design company KI showed their designs at NeoCon interior design convention in Chicago this week, featuring products with a special focus on getting workers moving.

The latest line of KI’s furniture “encourages mobility,” said Jonathan Webb, a vice president with the company.

KI’s WorkUp desk moves smoothly between a regular sitting desk to a standing one.

(Photo via KI)

The egg-shaped Sway chair moves with you as you turn or lean back.

“We want to encourage sitting and standing throughout the day. It’s important to have a balance,” Webb said. He said that many companies are coming to KI to ask what they can do to make an office environment that will promote health.

KI hopes offices will combine their chairs and couches with desks to create different workspaces in the interest of encouraging workers to get up and walk to a new location to work — it’s all about getting away from sitting for uninterrupted long periods.

What’s so bad about sitting? Besides compressing your lungs and straining your back (if, like many people, you slouch when you sit), sitting can limit your body’s Lipoprotein Lipase, which breaks down fat in the blood. Standing up keeps that process going.

This Ted-Ed video, “The Hidden Risks of Sitting,” explains the problem:

So even if your office doesn’t have different work spaces, its always a good idea to talk a walk every so often.