Why taking the office stairs can give you a lift

As a child I lived in a narrow house with five floors. Half my youth was spent running up and down the staircase and I have been a devoted stair-climber ever since.

The only place where I never take the stairs – unless I’m going only one floor – is in the office. You could say this is because I’m too busy climbing a virtual ladder to have any strength left for an actual one, but actually it is because the long hours sitting still in front of a screen sap my desire to expend any energy at all.

Yet a couple of weeks ago, encouraged by a friend, I started walking up the 80 stairs to the office canteen, making the journey several times a day in search of coffee, Maltesers and Diet Cokes.

I have been rewarded for this in various ways. First, it is usually quicker: 55 seconds compared with about 70 in the lift, assuming a couple of stops on the way. Second, it leaves you feeling agreeably smug. Third, it is a less stressful way of having chance encounters with colleagues. In the lift you are forced into a strained exchange, while on the stairs you smile and keep moving. Most important of all, it drags you out of your torpor.

Here, at last, is something that is good for you but that has none of the drawbacks of most healthy things. It doesn't taste bad, or require special clothing; it isn't inconvenient, expensive or boring; and it doesn't require any skill or courage.

Hiding place
Yet despite these impressive advantages, stairs in offices are usually empty of walkers. Instead, they are mainly used as a hiding place, a corporate equivalent of going behind the bike shed, a place for phoning your bank, shouting at your builder or exchanging top-secret gossip.

Last week, an initiative backed by the UK government was launched, designed to get everyone taking to the stairs. On its website are posters that can be downloaded telling staff how many calories they would burn if they avoided the lift, as well as a phone app that makes stair-climbing into a kind of computer game.

Even as an evangelical convert to office stair-walking, I’m not so sure. For a start the name – StepJockey – is all wrong. A jockey is someone who rides, while the point about a stair-walker is that they do not. And it is far too gimmicky for something as simple as getting from one floor to another in the way that God intended.

Worse, the point about calories saved is hardly compelling. I climb four floors to the canteen (15 calories burned) in order to buy a latte (200 calories) and Maltesers (180 calories). The numbers are so depressing, it is best not to think of them at all. And as for an app that will gamify stair-climbing, I can’t imagine how that could ever catch on. (Though my record here is not perfect: the first time I saw a text message I thought that wouldn’t catch on, either.)

More fundamentally, it is not clear that companies ought to be telling us how to get from one floor to another. I'm mildly opposed to my HR department becoming my nanny, though that is mainly because I don't trust it to do the job well. If I thought it would be as good as Mary Poppins (who solved the stair problem by sliding up the banister) I would cheerfully give myself over. But as I don't, I would rather look after myself.

Playing nanny
However, last week I took it upon myself to play nanny to my colleagues and downloaded the posters and stuck them with Blu-Tack by every lift. I lay in wait as two young men read the poster – which claimed that seven times more calories were burned by taking the stairs than the lift. One started to argue that the figure was far too low, and was still objecting as the lift doors closed behind him.

By the afternoon, however, I fancied that the stairs were possibly getting a little more crowded. There were two men going up together, one taking the steps two at a time and talking as he did so. Clearly there are real power games to be played on the stairs – as well as electronic ones.

Alas, by the end of the day some bigger nanny than me had decided he or she knew best and had taken most of my posters down. Which maybe doesn’t matter as they were a bit feeble anyway. If companies really want to get people using the stairs, something stronger than nannying is called for – like putting half the lifts out of service, forcing the able-bodied to walk.

The only adjustment then needed would be to find another bike shed to hide behind. Almost anywhere would be better: the stairwell is a natural auditorium, so that top gossip and angry rants to the plumber can be heard several floors away. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013)