Three Reasons to Stand During Your Meetings

How many times have you caught your attention trailing off in a meeting? Whether it's a short meetup or a longer brainstorming session, standing is more beneficial for your body and your productivity.

Businesses everywhere are taking a stand against sitting-only meetings, giving their employees more freedom to stand if they choose. But why are they doing it? As a fan of standing during meetings myself, I was more than eager to find out the actual benefits of getting off my duff in the conference room, beyond making them more engaging.

Standing Meetings are Good for Business

You might have already learned about the negative health effects you get from sitting for too many hours a day. But what about the negative effects sitting has on business? When it comes to meetings, this is even more so. Think about it like this. If eight employees go into a one hour meeting, that's a full eight hours of work that has been used. An entire workday for one person. But a recent Forbes study proved that standing meetings can cut that time by 25%, a huge cost-savings for companies.

Saving time isn't the only benefit to businesses when they adopt standing meetings. People have reported more productivity when they gave their bodies the chance to stand. Writers at Forbes praised the reduction in distractions as one of the reasons they felt productivity was improved. If you're the type to try to do "background" work in meetings, such as sending emails, standing made it more awkward (not to mention more obvious).

Also, if you've ever had the floor during a meeting but didn't feel like you were being properly heard, standing has been proven to command attention, making it easier for employees to effectively make their point.

Getting Out of the Chair Better for Brainstorming

If you work in an office, you're probably familiar with the concept of your personal space. Whether that happens in a cubicle or an open office, people are naturally territorial, and usually end up taking ownership of the space around them. Now, watch what happens in a meeting. Although employees may share a smaller room and sit together at the same table, they will claim a certain amount of space, placing laptops, notebooks, and coffee mugs where they feel their boundaries should be.

This "individually-oriented mindset" is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but when it comes to creativity, territorialness has been shown to lead to a less fluid sharing of ideas. In fact, a study conducted by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri found that groups working together on a project while standing are measurably more engaged and less territorial than while seated. This led to more idea sharing and boosted collaboration just by moving chairs out of the room during meetings.

So, ditching the chairs could help your team share ideas and come up with conclusions just by standing.

Standing is Healthier for Your Body (and Is More Comfortable)

If your job requires you to work in an office, you can probably attest to the painfulness of sitting for a majority of the day. Moving more and standing is much better for our bodies than sitting, and standing is a happy in-between that allows employees to focus more. If you feel like you're going to want a bit of support but don't want to take a seat, perch on active seating, which will let you rest a bit while you're listening to the speaker. Whether you stand or perch, getting out of a traditional chair, even for a while, is better for your body.

Increase circulation throughout your entire body just by switching your posture. If you're already working at a height adjustable desk, you probably already appreciate the feeling. Extend that same comfort to the conference room with a Height Adjustable Conference Table, which will allow you to adjust for height when you feel like standing or sitting. It's also a smart way to host standing meetings that give employees space for storage, as opposed to standing meetings without a table.

Whatever you need to help your workday go more smoothly, to boost your team's creativity, and reduce the time you spend in meetings, UPLIFT Desk has a growing range of products to convert your office. Let us help you plan your space, or if you need help shopping, reach out to our team via call, email, or chat live on our site below.