Hybrid workers sleep 15 minutes longer and sit 45 minutes more on home-working days

Researchers at the University of Turku tracked 97 hybrid workers in Finland, comparing their activity on days worked from home with days worked in the office. On home-working days participants slept about 15 minutes longer, but spent about 45 minutes more sedentary, with standing time falling sharply. The study, led by Kristin Suorsa, was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

Why this matters. The commute you have stopped doing was also incidental movement, and it does not replace itself. Walking to a station, standing on a platform, crossing an office to speak to someone and taking stairs between floors add up to a meaningful amount of time on your feet, and the research suggests that on home days roughly three times as much time is reclaimed by sitting as by sleeping. If you work hybrid, the day to plan deliberate movement into is the day you are at home, which is counterintuitive because it feels like the easier day.

It is a small sample in a single country, so treat the specific figures as indicative rather than settled. What makes it useful is that it measures behaviour rather than asking people to estimate it, and it compares the same individuals across both settings, which removes the problem of comparing remote-inclined people with office-inclined ones.

This is also the kind of evidence that will matter to the EU’s forthcoming Quality Jobs Act, given the Commission’s own acknowledgement that existing workplace health and safety law does not reach the home.