If there was a fire in your building, are you sure you have all the means of escape in place to enable people to get out safely?

What if a disabled person in a wheelchair was trapped upstairs? Would they be able to get back down if the lift was out of action and their chair was too big or heavy to carry?

Stress is a major cause of occupational ill health. In 2006/07, 13.8 million working days were lost because of it.

Meetings, meetings, meetings…we probably all feel we spend far too much time in them. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot any of us can do about it. But being tired of meetings is a different problem to being tired at meetings. That’s something we can help to improve. A simple thing like selecting proper ergonomic meeting room chairs can make all the difference.

Posturite has been awarded ISO 14001 certification – the recognised international standard for environmental management. It is the cornerstone of the ISO 14000 series of environmental standards and the only one requiring certification by a third party.

CEO Ian Fletcher-Price said: “Although we are delighted to have this official recognition of our ‘green’ credentials, it really only confirms what we have been doing here for years. “We have long recognised the importance of sustainability in our manufacturing processes and Scandinavian producers like HAG and RH Form have been way ahead of the game in manufacturing chairs using recycled materials and recycling them again at their end of their life.

“The ISO 14001 seal confirms to our customers that we have the systems in place to meet internationally recognised environmental standards – something that many of them, quite rightly, will regard as important.”

Posturite has taken another giant step towards its eventual goal of having a paperless office with the introduction of a new electronic document management system at the company’s headquarters in Berwick, East Sussex. The new system will do away with the need to keep paper files and allow staff across the country to have instant access to the information stored in them. At the moment regional managers, account managers and customer support executives who spend most of their time on the road have to rely on admin staff at HQ to retrieve any account or other information they may need before visiting a client.

Europe's leading annual health and safety event was held at the NEC this year. Posturite were one of the industry-leading organisations attending the event, which included 350 companies.

Eskimo Ice out-sources their health and Safety process to Posturite.

Over the course of the next twelve months all health and safety issues and policies will be dealt with by the WorkRite division of Posturite. This is Bob Smith’s (resident consultant) first health and safety contract since starting with us in March.

Essentially he will be the person responsible for ensuring Eskimo Ice meet all the necessary health and safety obligations.

This marks the continued growth of the WorkRite division and will be the first of many health and safety contracts.

Jorgen Josefsson, MD of our leading chair supplier, RH, discusses the greener office.

The article, featured on the front page of the office furniture advisory service’s newsletter (issue 48, Spring 2008), covers ‘greenwashing’, the tendency of companies to paint their products with the environmentally friendly brush, so as to increase their credibility and, of course, sales.