TNO released a report on February 27 titled "Sitting While Working." The results show the Netherlands is the European champion for sitting at work. The report, translated from Dutch, is reposted below. Download the fact sheet "Sitting at work 2023" and discover why the Netherlands is the European sitting champion (at the bottom of the article).
A shocking statistic shows 26% of Dutch people aged 15 and over spend more than 8.5 hours a day sitting, well above the European average of 11%. Sitting for long periods of time poses major physical and mental health risks.
One of several innovation hubs on High Tech Campus Eindhoven is the Workplace Vitality Hub, located at HTC 85. The hub was founded by TNO, Fontys, imec, TU/e, Twice and HTCE to improve the vitality of working people. Here the founders combine their extensive knowledge and experience to come up with concrete, innovative and effective solutions for a vital working environment. Partners have been working for years on innovations that encourage office workers to stand and move more during working hours.
One initiative, Work Walk, is a vitality concept that helps improve your quality of work and life. There are four 20-27 minute Work Walk routes on HTCE: the Dommel, Sports Forest, Heather and Lake. You can see the Work Walk routes here.
The Workplace Vitality Hub is also working on a toolkit for standing meetings, offering concrete tools to support companies in tackling the "sitting while working" problem. Contact Marieke van Beurden to learn more about this toolkit.
Theme: Work and health
February 27, 2024
Of the Dutch population aged 15 years and older, 26% spend more than 8.5 hours sitting on an average day. This makes the Netherlands 'European sitting champion'. In no other country does such a large part of the population sit for so many hours per day. In the rest of the EU that is 11%. In 2022, employees worked an average of 8.9 hours per working day. This is stated in the fact sheet “sitting during work” that TNO published today.
In 2022, workers spent an average of 8.9 hours per day. This happens more than half of the time at work: an average of 4.5 hours. In their spare time, employees sit for an average of 3.4 hours. The remaining “sitting time” is 1 hour and involves commuting. Almost half (47%) of Dutch employees sit at work for 6 hours or more on an average working day. There is a large variation in sitting time at work between different occupational groups and sectors.
In the financial and ICT sectors, people sit the most during work, 7 and 6.8 hours respectively. That is approximately 2.5 hours more than the average time spent at work in the Netherlands. The sectors where people spend the least time are trade (3.4 hours), agriculture (3.2 hours) and catering (1.3 hours). Lawyers, financial specialists and software and application developers sit for 7.3 hours at work.
Previous research by the Health Council* shows that sitting for long periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. People who sit more than 8 hours a day and exercise little have a 74% higher risk of cardiovascular disease than people who sit less than 4 hours a day and exercise a lot. Sitting for long periods of time is also associated with a higher risk of premature death. Sitting more than 8 hours a day leads to a 27% greater risk of premature death compared to sitting less than 4 hours a day.
* Health Council; Sedentary behavior and risk of chronic diseases, background document to Dutch Physical Activity Guidelines 2017, The Hague