Case study
Professional Services
What we found
When Capita, the UK's leading outsourcing company, chose to begin refurbishing and recycling its office furniture, they engaged the help of Work Services.
Its site in Sheffield employs between 800 and 1,500 members of staff (depending on demand), run over a seven day operation with various shift patterns. When the warranty on the 1,000 office chairs ran out in 2005, Capita were looking for a cost effective solution to replacement.
What we did
Work Services, the office services division of the Work Inc Group, offered Capita a recycling and refurbishment route that ticked the boxes from an environmental point of view and as a cost saving exercise.
Work Services maintain the chairs every six months, which can be as simple as greasing the mechanism or changing the gas-lift parts entirely.
Making it work
Steve Hadley, FM Coordinator for Capita, explains the company's reasons for choosing the refurbishing/recycling option. "Good quality office chairs can be costly and the fit out of a site for 1,000 employees is an expensive task - refurbishing is a quarter of the cost. But we also have environmental concerns to consider. We make use of the parts from chairs which are beyond repair and anything that requires disposal is done in accordance with our strict waste and environmental policies."
Work Services has worked with Capita for over two and a half years, refurbishing more than 700 chairs over that period. This has prevented approximately 2100kg of waste going to landfill.
