The pandemic that the whole world has been fighting against for several months forces us to think about our habits of life, work and consumption.
For example, we were able to appreciate the importance that the means of communication had in organizing our relations with others. Imagine the containment without a phone, without an app to telework, without a photo-sharing platform, without the internet as a window on the outside...
This crisis has also brought to the fore a change in lifestyle: we have consumed less, closer and more sustainable.
In these turbulent times, telework has become the norm for most companies in order to continue to operate.
Many of us also discovered the work at home, with its attractions and dangers, its benefits and its risks.

 

A new vision of the workplace by employees, employers and manufacturers

 

Overnight, employees had to organize themselves, find a new rhythm, experiment with new rituals, set up a workspace in their homes. In the face of this new situation, they did pretty well!
However, in the near future, in the "post-world", if telework becomes commonplace, employers will have to study the question of the furniture intended for the home. To be efficient, healthy, available, it is necessary that the employee is settled and equipped at home as well as he is at the office.
Manufacturers will also have to adapt their offerings to the needs and expectations of this new clientele. Furniture manufacturers, for example, will have to offer practical, ergonomic and durable furniture in their catalogues. In this dynamic, the brand NF Office Excellence Certifié will accompany them, as it has done since its birth.

What are the specifications for quality furniture?

To ensure that a product meets both the expectations and needs of users, and the industrial constraints, one only solution : the certification. Indeed, only certification is delivered by an independent body to the applicant industrialist, it is not self-reporting. And NF Office Excellence Certifié (NF OEC) is the only existing certification brand for office furniture in France.

This demanding mark is only delivered if can be proved :
• The compliance with the regulations and standards of the products concerned
• The company's ability to manufacture products of a level of quality equivalent to the products tested during the various technical and quality audits
• The company's settlement and follow-up of societal and environmental involvements

All of these requirements are based on International, European and French standards, which are supplemented, when necessary, by limit values.

Unlike a simple product standard, for which a manufacturer can request a certificate proving that the product concerned complies with it at a "T" moment, the certification ensures that the product purchased is identical to the product being tested.
 

How? By a regular surveillance in companies. A qualified auditor conducts an annual technical audit of the production site to ensure that:
• The product has not undergone any changes that could impact the certified characteristics
• The production process is the same from year to year
• The suppliers originally selected are still the same, in order to guarantee the same quality of product performance as set in the NF OEC mark reference system.
In the same way, when necessary, an audit of the subcontractor or subcontractors is conducted at a defined interval.

The NF OEC brand is the first product certification brand to incorporate societal and environmental criteria. Even before to talk about the product, the company must meet two prerequisites:
• Provide proof of filing of its ICPE file (Classified Facility for Environmental Protection)
• Demonstrate the compliance with societal criteria
To make it an elitist brand, 14 of the 18 criteria come directly from the NF Environment Furniture certification brand requirements.

For the product, the compliance with the requirements set out in the NF OEC brand framework has to be established by test reports edited by ISO 17025 accredited laboratories. These requirements may include:
- Mechanics
- Finishings (panel coatings, metal...)
- Coatings (textiles, crackles...)
- Foams
- Fire behaviour
All of these requirements are listed in a certification framework. This is available on the website of the furniture certification brands: www.meuble-qualite-certifie.fr

The mark is only delivered if the manufacturer's involvement is quantifiable and measurable. Therefore, its framework can help buyers to write tenders and performance indicators.

Quality assurance for users, distributors, prescribers

The NF Office Excellence Certifié brand is the natural evolution of the NF Bureau Sécurité Confortique (NF BSC) brand, a brand created in the 1980s.
In the early 2000s, the office furniture profession, specifically companies with NF BSC certified products (called trademark owners) asked us to create an elitist brand that would, in addition to the existing technical requirements) incorporate health and societal criteria to better meet the market needs. It should also have a name understandable to English speakers. After a 3-year gestation was born the brand NF Office Excellence Certifié, on October 14, 2011.

 

For all these reasons, we have seen a growing interest from buyers and prescribers in recent years for this NF brand.

Synonymous with sustainability, safety, limitation of the impact on the environment throughout its life cycle and respect for humans, the NF OEC brand knew, knows and will know how to adapt itself to the needs of users.

Working in a certified world means working with peace of mind!

 

Eléonore Drugeon