Going Remote Is Making Many Workers More Sedentary, Study Suggests
On the days hybrid workers stay home instead of going into the office, they sit for about 44 extra minutes and get roughly 58 fewer minutes of light and moderate-to-vigorous activity combined, according to research published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. The study puts hard numbers on something many remote workers have long suspected: working from home quietly drains movement out of the day.
Researchers tracked 97 university employees who split their weeks between office and remote work, having each person wear a small sensor on the thigh for seven days to track sitting, standing, walking, and other activity, while participants separately logged when they went to bed and woke up. Because the same people were compared against themselves on different types of days, the study could isolate what changes when someone swaps an office desk for a home setup, rather than relying on guesses about how active people felt they had been.
A consistent pattern emerged: remote days brought more sitting, less standing and light movement, and less harder exercise, along with just a small bump in time spent resting or in bed.
Thigh-Worn Sensors Captured a Week of Real Movement
Instead of asking people to fill out surveys about their habits after the fact, the research team had participants wear a small motion-tracking device on the thigh for a full week. The device could tell the difference between sitting, standing, walking, and harder movement based on the angle and motion of the leg. Participants reported their own bedtimes and wake times separately, since the sensor couldn’t capture sleep on its own.
Each person logged a mix of office and remote workdays over the week, averaging a little more than two of each, enough to make a solid comparison. The group was mostly women in their early forties, all employed at a university where hybrid schedules had become common.
A full day always adds up to 24 hours no matter how that time gets divided between sitting, sleeping, standing, or moving. To account for that, the researchers used a statistical method built for exactly this kind of back-and-forth data. Rather than comparing single numbers, like total minutes of exercise, the method looks at how all the different activities balance against each other, since more time spent on one behavior always means less time for something else.
Remote Workdays Tipped the Balance Toward Sitting
Clearest of all was the difference in the balance between active behaviors, meaning light movement and harder exercise, and passive ones, meaning sitting and lying down. That balance tipped toward passivity on remote workdays. A typical office day included roughly 10.6 hours of sitting and 49 minutes of more vigorous activity. Remote days brought extra sitting, less light movement, and less vigorous activity, along with a modest bump in rest time.
Sitting and lying down in bed, by contrast, didn’t shift in any meaningful way between the two types of days. It was the shift from standing and moving to sitting still that stood out. The researchers pointed out that this pattern likely reflects the built-in structure of an office day, where commuting, meetings, and other routine interruptions break up long stretches of sitting in ways a home office often doesn’t.
A follow-up look at the data hinted that people who normally bike or walk to work felt the change more sharply. Outside of work hours on remote days, that group’s sedentary time crept up by roughly half an hour, more than four times the shift seen in people who usually drive or take transit, while their vigorous activity dropped by about 18 minutes. Losing a regular bike commute, in other words, may leave a bigger hole in the day than losing a drive.
Small Changes Could Help Offset the Lost Movement
Sitting less isn’t just an abstract wellness talking point. This study did not measure health outcomes directly, but the researchers point to earlier research showing benefits from breaking up sedentary time with physical activity, and note that more sitting and less activity during remote work could be tied to less favorable metabolic effects over time. The extra time in bed recorded on remote days was modest compared with the drop in movement, though the study wasn’t designed to determine whether that trade-off ultimately helps or harms health.
None of this means remote work is bad for health. It does suggest that hybrid workers may want to be deliberate about building movement into remote days, since it doesn’t happen as naturally as it does inside an office building. Standing during phone calls, taking a walk instead of a coffee break, or scheduling short movement breaks could help close the gap. The takeaway is simple: the ease of working from home comes with a quiet trade-off in daily movement, one that hybrid workers might benefit from managing on purpose rather than letting it slide.
Source: https://studyfinds.com/working-from-home-less-movement/
