Remote work eliminates the morning commute and the physical navigation of a large office building. While many employees appreciate the convenience, this shift in environment alters how people move and rest throughout a 24-hour period.
Researchers recently investigated how hybrid workers divide their time between sleeping, sitting, and moving depending on where they log in. The study, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, found that working from home is linked to slightly more sleep and significantly more sitting.
The investigation was led by Kristin Suorsa and a team of researchers at the University of Turku in Finland. The researchers noted that while previous studies looked at how remote work impacts physical activity, many of those investigations took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemic-era studies were often complicated by lockdowns, closed gyms, and temporary home-office setups. In addition, many past projects looked at isolated chunks of the day rather than examining how a change in one habit triggers a shift in another across a full 24-hour cycle.
To get a complete picture of a hybrid worker’s day, the team recruited 97 university employees. The participants spent a week wearing a small motion sensor attached to their thighs.
This sensor ran continuously, allowing the researchers to track exactly when participants were lying down, sitting, standing, walking, or engaging in intense exercise. Participants also kept daily logs to record their work hours, work locations, and the exact times they went to bed and woke up.
By comparing data from the same individuals on both office days and remote days, the researchers could observe personal baseline changes. The team used a statistical approach called compositional data analysis to account for the fact that time is finite. If a person spends more time sleeping, that time must mathematically be subtracted from another activity.
The tracking data revealed a consistent pattern. On remote workdays, participants engaged in a higher ratio of passive behaviors to active behaviors compared to their time in the office.
When quantified, the average remote workday included 14 extra minutes of time in bed. However, it also included 44 additional minutes of sedentary behavior, such as sitting at a desk or on a couch.
Physical activity saw a corresponding drop on remote days. Participants logged 37 fewer minutes of light physical activity and 21 fewer minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
To understand exactly how these activities replaced one another, the researchers mapped the flow of time between different behaviors. They found that the additional sedentary time at home primarily replaced time spent standing in the office.
The loss of morning and evening commutes also played a major role in these behavioral shifts. The time flow analysis showed that minutes typically spent cycling or walking to the office were reallocated to sitting or sleeping on remote days.
The researchers observed that employees who usually walked or biked to the office experienced the sharpest declines in physical activity. During non-working hours on remote days, these active commuters showed much larger drops in movement than colleagues who normally commuted by car or bus.
The differences between office and home environments were especially pronounced during working hours. At home, employees spent an average of 36 more minutes sitting during their shifts and 26 fewer minutes engaging in light activity.
The researchers suggest that the home environment often lacks the built-in interruptions found in an office building. Remote workers might not need to walk to a conference room, visit a colleague’s desk, or step out for lunch, which naturally leads to longer unbroken stretches of sitting.
To counter this, the authors argue that hybrid workers should look for feasible ways to add movement back into their remote days. Height-adjustable desks are one option for reducing seated time at home.
Because remote work offers more flexibility in how tasks are scheduled, employees could also use the time saved from commuting to engage in a dedicated workout. The researchers note that replacing sedentary time with moderate-to-vigorous exercise is a highly efficient way to compensate for the general lack of light activity at home.
The study focused on university employees in professional occupations, meaning the results might not perfectly reflect the experiences of hybrid workers in other industries. Additionally, while the motion sensors accurately tracked daytime postures, the data regarding time in bed relied on self-reported sleep logs rather than objective clinical measurements.
