Standing orders

Summary:

The OECD is recommending that sit–stand workstations and treadmill desk scan achieve a four-to-one return on investment through improved employment and productivity. But do the figures stack up?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is claiming an astonishing return on investment if organisations make sit–stand workstations and treadmill desks available to employees¹. Its report on Promoting health and well-being at work¹ (this issue p.8) states that scaling up such interventions ‘could improve employment and productivity equivalent to having an increase of 37,000 workers per year in 30 OECD countries, with a positive economic return of US $4 for each dollar invested’. I’m not convinced.

The OECD estimates are derived from its burden-of-disease modelling², and originally published in a 2019 report on tackling obesity³. Based on a meta-analysis by Chu et al⁴, it was assumed that the intervention would reduce daily sitting time by ‘72.78 minutes’…

John Ballard is editor of Occupational Health at Work.

Author: Ballard J

Tags obesity

Occupational Health at Work February/March 2023 (vol. 19/5) pp03

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