The world is changing.

People are changing.

The amount of time we spend sitting is now substantially higher than it was for our parents’ generation, and their parents’ before them. As a nation we’re spending huge amounts of time at our desks, staring at screens (whether that’s a computer, a tablet or a mobile phone). We’re almost never off the grid, and it is all incredibly stressful.

With more hours working, and traveling to and from work it shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise that not everyone has the time (or the motivation) to exercise enough or to eat well. Sometimes it’s easier to grab something quick to eat, plant yourself on the sofa in front of the television and just stay there till bedtime. It means we spend days at a time sitting, lying down, and not sleeping. So, it’s no surprise then that everyone’s putting on a few pounds, and the whole nation is a bit heavier than they should be.

With an ever growing population, it wasn’t going to be long before we had to adapt our offices to suit the staff who are using them. Gone are the days when it would have been okay to fill an office with fifty identical desks and fifty identical chairs. It just isn’t a practical solution for everyone. Some people are heavier, some people taller or shorter or with particular physical difficulties which means that they can’t just be pigeon holed. There’s all sorts of chairs for overweight people, desks which are fully adjustable so you can work from a seating or a standing position, and other equipment which will make your workplace much more suitable and comfortable for all your staff, no matter who they are and what there build is. Chairs for overweight people have opened the doors to a range of different products to improve usability and accessibility.

The difficult question is speaking to your staff and finding out whether they would benefit from chairs for overweight people or other specialist equipment. While in some more extreme cases this might be obvious, in many others it won’t be. For those who are muscular or particularly tall there’s almost no way you’d be able to judge weight, and usual offices chairs are actually fairly flimsy. Anyone who weighs upwards of 20 stone can benefit from chairs for overweight people as this is who they’re designed for.