The Telegraph: Could a treadmill desk save your life?

From The Telegraph:

“We installed our first treadmill desks back in 2007,” Salo’s director of operations, Craig Dexheimer tells me. “We put four in a conference room that can be used for walking meetings and six that can be used by anybody.” There was, he acknowledges, an initial degree of scepticism among the employees. “When you see a treadmill in an office environment for the first time, it’s kind of strange.” Soon, though, there was a queue to get onto them. “We tend to have between two and eight people at a time, but as there are only four treadmills in the conference room, people take it in turns and rotate every 10 minutes.” And you’re saying that they really do this, without tripping over, or fainting from embarrassment?

“Oh sure,” says Dexheimer. So are you standing at your treadmill desk now, as you’re talking to me? I ask.

“Er no,” he says. “Not exactly… I do use it, but to be honest I find the volume of use has declined. It’s good for some things, but not so good for others. Handwriting can be quite awkward.

“But we do a lot of walking meetings – some of them on the treadmills and some of them outside. In fact, we found that walking meetings not only tended to be more productive than sedentary ones, they’re also, on average, 10 minutes shorter.” There are signs that walking meetings may be catching on over here.

The full article can be accessed here via The Telegraph’s website.