Globally, one in four adults do not meet the recommended amount of physical activity. Because people spend a significant amount of time in the work environment and especially office employees spend a lot of time in sedentary behaviour and have low physical activity levels, this study focuses on the reduction of sedentary behaviour and increase of physical activity in both the office building and the home work environment by replacing sedentary behaviour with incidental physical activity in terms of walking and stair climbing.

This study specifically focuses on the relation between the arrangement of spaces within the office building and employees’ incidental physical activity, since there is limited existing knowledge on this relation. In addition, this study focuses on other spatial, social and personal factors that may influence incidental physical activity within offices where spaces are arranged differently and in the home work environment. Therefore, the main research question is as follows: “How can the arrangement of spaces within the office building and the home work environment stimulate office employees’ incidental physical activity in terms of walking and stair climbing?”

The study resulted in an enhanced method to answer this research question. In this study, this method is tested, refined and retested to advise for further use of the method. Next to that, some results about the relation between the work environment and office employees’ incidental physical activity are discussed.