Talking to Janice Miller about her office furniture business an be a moving experience, of sorts.

Miller is a quiet, soft-spoken former English teacher who listens intently to each question and gives carefully thoughtout answers. The conversation is going along quite nicely when suddenly the furniture starts moving.

I can stand to work if I need to," Miller says as she rises from behind her desk. What's unnerving is that the desk starts rising, too. It is a large desk and you don't have to be Archimedes to figure out that the slightly built lady is not lifting it. The desk seems to be going up - and down - on its own, as though levitating. Except, the nervous visitor reassures himself, the legs of the desk aren't moving, just the top of it.

So Janice Miller doesn't work in the Twilight Zone after all. It just seems that way at times. Because Miller is president of Jaymill Active Furniture in Manchester, where the furniture is ... well, active. Jaymill advertises itself as a specialist in "ergonomic solutions." And a desk that can be used by the same person either sitting or standing is one solution to a common problem in the modem workplace - a job that requires a worker to remain in the same place for several hours at a time.

In the not-too-distant past, back before we had fax machines and e-mail, people in offices had to move around more, said Miller, if only to get up and mail letters. Many of today's office workers are more deskbound than ever, and that creates problems, including lower back pains, carpal tunnel syndrome and other injuries that result from stationary positions and repetitive motions through the long course of a workday.

One solution - of many - is the kind of adjustable desk Miller has in her own office. The height adjustments, activated by gas cylinders, can be made with the touch of a button. It allows, as Miller demonstrated, an individual to switch from sitting to standing, or vice versa, while working on different projects. It also allows workers of different heights to use the same desk.

Problem-solvers

The furniture isn't the only thing that moves at Jaymill. The business has been up and about considerably since it began in the early '90s in a spare bedroom in the Bedford home of Miller and her husband Ernie, now the vice president of Jaymill.

Ernie Miller was in sales at the time with the now-defunct Maine Manufacturing Co. in Nashua when he was approached by representatives of ErgoScandia, a Swedish firm, that was interested in selling ergonomically designed furniture in the United States. The Millers went on a trip to Sweden in 1991 to examine the concept and the company's products.

"I was just fascinated by it," said Janice. "Ernie's company wasn't interested in it, so we said, 'We think we are."'

Ernie, did talk Maine Manufacturing into allowing the formation of a "sub-company," Ergo-Tech, within the firm to try to sell the furniture. He considered it a bizarre request himself, but he made it anyway. He was amazed when the company went along with it. "I would have fired me on the spot," he said.

Miller, along with the company controller and a vice president of the firm, tried to make a go of the furniture venture, but without a sales staff and organizational support from the parent company, it soon folded. Miller continued at Maine Manufacturing for a time while Janice launched the enterprise anew from that converted spare bedroom.

"We began importing workstations from Sweden," Janice Miller said, and they began adapting them to meet the needs of businesses in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts. The business grew, and Jaymill had moved to the Bedford Village Shoppes on Route 10 1 by the mid-'90s. The company is now in the Manchester Millyard, with a showroom and offices at 150 Dow St.

But where they are is less important than where the customers are, she said. Jaymill will go to them.

"We go in and find out what the ergonomic problems are," she said, "then we go out and find solutions to the problems in the workplace."

Height-adjustable desks, whether they operate by gas cylinder, electricity or hand-crank, are sometimes a part of the solution. So are adjustable chairs. But the company's main work is designing the furniture to fit the people who use it. Training people in how to use it is also part of their mission.

The traditional approach, said Janice Miller, has been to "make our bodies adjust to whatever the furniture is instead of starting with correct posture and adjusting the furniture to meet our needs."

As a high school English teacher in Hollis, she used to tell students to sit up straight. Now she tells customers the same thing and provides the furniture that helps them do it

Designs for working

Slumping and slouching are only part of a problem Jaymill tries to correct in the workplace. There are a number of common practices that contribute to bad ergonomics. One is having the computer screen too high, forcing the user to look slightly upward, putting stress on the neck and shoulder muscles. The monitor, say the Millers, should be in line, with a slightly downward look.

Another common practice is having the keyboard and monitor facing in different directions so the operator has to keep turning to see the screen. A "split" workstation allows the keyboard to be slightly below the desk so the forearms and wrists can be flat while typing, rather than cocked at an upward angle that increases stress.

A split keyboard also allows the user to write with hands and arms further apart, rather than with the elbows against the body as is required by the standard keyboard. As Jaymill's Jenniffer McConnell explained, the conventional typewriter was designed with women typists in mind, at a time when people were generally smaller.

A (usually) slender woman would sit at the keyboard with elbows resting against her corset. Today keyboards are used by men and women of all sizes and shapes. And, she noted, "We don't wear corsets anymore."

The mouse for operating a computer comes in a variety of sizes and shapes at Jaymill, to accommodate those for whom the traditional mouse causes stress and stain on the wrist and hand with continual usage.

The Millers emphasize, however, that no one solution will work for everybody Ernie Miller, for example, told of one customer who liked one of the company's chairs so well he bought the same chair for an entire department.

"That's like buying 1,000 size 9 shoes for a high school and saying 'OK, put 'em on and go play basketball,"' he said. "There is no one-size-fits-all in ergonomics."

Jaymill's customers include Nashua Corp., Teradyne Corp., Osram Sylvania, L.L. Bean, Verizon, Public Service of New Hampshire, the McLane law firm and New Hampshire's Administrative Office of the Courts. The company also works with a number of hospitals, including Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, Maine Medical Center and Lakes Region Hospital in Laconia.

Hospitals tend to be in the forefront of awareness of ergonomic problems, Ernie Miller said. "They have so many PTs (physical therapists) and OTs (occupational therapists) on staff that they know what the issues are."

The approaching 'norm'

One of Jaymill's earliest and most steady customers has been North Atlantic Energy Service Corp., the company that operates the nuclear plant at Seabrook. The ergonomics program at Seabrook Station, begun in 1994, is credited with bringing the plant's ergonomics-related injuries on the OSHA 200 log from 81 down to zero by 1997 - despite the fact that the number of people working on computers had gone from 100 to 750 in a single year. Jaymill was the winner when North Atlantic invited vendors to compete for the contract to both supply furniture and provide ergonomic education.

"Service was part of the package," Kim Zito, then the site services supervisor, told the Ergonomic-News in 1997. "They would come in as often as we asked to help one person, and we would not have to pay for the furniture until each person was satisfied. They are an integral part of the program."

North Atlantic, with about 1,000 employees at Seabrook Station, now has four active cases on the OSHA 200 log, the current site services supervisor, Richard Bragel, said. "I would say furniture issues are probably 75 to 80 percent of the problem," said Bragel. Personal habits also play a factor, he said. Some workers either forget or don't bother to stop work periodically and get up and stretch. ("Have you tried doing your stretch breaks?" is a question Bragel likes to ask workers who have been too long at their keyboards.)

He also likes to fold down the tabs on the back comers of those keyboards that prop the keyboard at an incline, similar to those on the old typewriters. The resulting upward bend of the wrists and forearms is anathema to Bragel, who likes to keep things flat. The keyboard operator should be at a "9090," he said - torso and forearms forming one 90-degree angle, while upper and lower legs form another.

""Ergonomically correct" furniture is not cheap, Bragel said, but it lasts longer - and helps employees last longer and work better - than more conventional used office furniture. Sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day is similar to spending the same time behind the wheel of an automobile, he said.

"It's like sitting in a Chevy Citation or a Mercedes-Benz," he said. "You're certainly going to feel better at the end of the day if you're sitting in the Benz."

"If you compare it to the regular old metal desk with no adjustments, the ergonomically correct stuff that has all those adjustments is going to cost more," said Mark Lemay, New Hampshire sales manager for Creative Office Pavilion in Bedford. "But more and more over the years, it's what people want to buy The people we deal with regard that as the norm."

Instead of buying a $500 chair, a company "by nickel-anddiming it might buy a $150 chair," Lemay said. "But that $150 chair is not going to hold up more than two or three years, while the more expensive chair is going to have at least a 12year warranty Plus, you're getting more productivity out of people if they're comfortable. They're not going to be out of work as much with a bad back from sitting in something uncomfortable."

Intangible benefits

Having the night kind of furniture also can help a company comply with new OSHA ergonomics regulations, said Lemay.

"Back pain is now approaching 50 percent of workers' comp cases," said Peter Nawrocki, owner of the Relax the Back Store in Nashua. "Behind colds and flu, it's the second leading reason for missing work."

Nawrocki sells ergonomically designed furniture for both home and office at the Nashua store and the five Relax the Back franchises he has in the greater Boston area. The products are designed to give relief to the typical commuter who drives long distances to work, sits at a computer all day and comes home to slouch in an overstuffed chair or sofa.

Purchasers of the store's used office furniture are companies "that understand the significant cost to business" of back problems, said Nawrocki. Large companies purchasing furniture in large quantities for several locations tend to be wedded to the "onesize-fits-all" mentality, he said. His customers are typically "law firms, small consulting businesses, start-up companies." Occasionally, an employee will buy his own office chair and take it with him when he changes jobs.

"They're taking their health in their own hands," he said. "They realize that once they're on worker's comp, their income's not the same as when they're fully employed."

Yet there are benefits beyond the tangible in keeping employees healthy and productive, said Bragel, who refers to the workers at Seabrook Station as his "customers."

"If I can help relieve a customer's pain," said Bragel, "there's a lot of satisfaction in that."

By: Kenny, Jack
Publication: New Hampshire Business Review
Date: Feb 23, 2001
Subject: Office furniture, Ergonomics