One of the many obstacles in creating a healthy work environment is to reduce the amount of sedentary time across the day. One intervention that is becoming increasingly more common is the use of a...Show moreOne of the many obstacles in creating a healthy work environment is to reduce the amount of sedentary time across the day. One intervention that is becoming increasingly more common is the use of a flexible desk, which allows employees to stand up during work without affecting their performance. In this study, we investigated the relationship between posture, arousal, and subjective work experience. Our study follows a within-subject design where participants completed both a flexible (alternating sections of 15-minutes sitting and 15-minutes standing) and a sitting condition (continuous sitting session) across two 2-hour test sessions. A cardiac measure was used to test a predicted physiological proxy of arousal in combination with selfreported arousal. From these measurements we tested whether they mediate the effects of posture on effort, tiredness and task engagement. Our results show that the physiological measure of heart rate variability was not a good proxy of arousal, as it did not mediate the effects of posture on self-reported arousal. Using mediation analyses we were able to show that posture leads to a reduction in effort and tiredness, fully mediated by self-reported arousal. No reliable association between posture and task engagement was found. These results show that using a flexible desk can aid in creating a healthy work environment, even on a short-term basis. Future research can expand on our study by investigating the link between posture and fatigue across multiple task conditions with diverse socio-demographic groups.Show less
