Doing leg swings and shoulder rotations at your desk might cause Irish employees to blush but our American counterparts have no such qualms.
The difficulty in staying healthy in a computer-based workforce has spawned shelves of books in the US, all offering exercises centred around your workstation.
ComputerFit by Randall Helm offers a selection of exercises, from backward bends to wall slide overhead reaches.
But even the most confident US employee must baulk at the "smile break". This involves standing up and smiling so broadly that your eyebrows rise involuntarily and your ears begin to hurt. Hold that pose for 30 seconds.
Apparently this will trick your mind into thinking that your body is happy and it will "tag along" and be happy too.
Having a healthy workforce is a major preoccupation for US employers as the obesity epidemic is costing them more than $12 billion a year in absenteeism, lower productivity and higher insurance costs.
Some companies are now running weight-loss competitions, with weekly weigh-ins and cash prizes or days off work.
The business training corporation, Highmark, bought pedometers for more than 2,800 staff and encouraged them to walk 10,000 steps, or five miles, every day over a 12-week period last February. One employee lost five stone and ran a marathon in October.
And the company's interest in the eating habits of its staff does not end when they leave the building. A dietitian has developed the "Maintain, don't gain" project to encourage staff to maintain their healthy eating habits during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.