Apart from improving physical discomfort, a standing desk can nearly double the employees' productivity levels, a new six-month study found.

Researchers from the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health found that call center agents who used standing desks improved their productivity by 46 percent compared to those who used conventional desks.

Furthermore, almost 75 percent of the participants who used the standing desks experienced less body discomfort during the six-month experiment. Findings suggested that standing desks can also improve the worker's health.

Lead author Gregory Garrett, M.A., who is also a doctoral student in public health, said that the reduction in body comfort could have contributed to the difference in productivity rates between the groups.

More so, the standing desks could improve cognitive performance, which will be one of the key areas the team will focus on in further studies.

However, co-author Mark Benden, Ph.D. warned that the study did not have randomized participants. The control group consisted of 93 workers who had been working at the company for one year or more.

In the six-month study, the controls remained seated at their conventional desks throughout the work day; while the other 74 employees, who had been on the job for just one to three months, used standing desks.

"We believe that the fact the new employees had at least one full month on the job, in addition to 60 days of training, before we began measuring, was more than enough to minimize 'experience variation' between the groups," said Benden.

This suggested that not having the option to choose between two workstations, the researchers were able to eliminate contributing factors that could affect one's productivity due to preference.

Last year, Benden also conducted a research on the effects of standing desks on students' productivity and attention levels.

In the 2015 study published in the International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, they found that standing desks improved the students' engagement in the classroom by 12 percent.

The new research was published in the IIE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors journal on May 24.

Photo: Niels Olson | Flickr