by Shane Henson — July 22, 2013—It is often the little things that make all the difference when it comes to employee satisfaction, as indicated by a recent study by the Identity Realization research group at the University of Exeter that showed simply having plants within an office environment and having a say in the office design boosts workers’ feelings of wellbeing.
The study was conducted through the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual Chelsea Flower Show. The Chelsea experiment involved 350 members of the public who agreed to experience one of four typical office designs. Participants were invited to undertake tasks to measure their productivity, wellbeing and creativity. The measures were collated for each office design and differences between the designs were assessed as part of the results data.
According to the researchers, the results showed that allowing staff to make design decisions in a workspace enhanced with office plants can increase wellbeing by 47 percent, increase creativity by 45 percent, and increase productivity by 38 percent.
The findings, which would be expected to translate to a significant increase in business profitability, confront the popular belief that plants and art are an unnecessary or even wasteful element of the business environment, say the researchers. Results from this and related scientific investigations stubbornly indicate that across all measures of psychological comfort and business performance, the managerially popular flexible, controlled, lean office is consistently inferior to a space enriched by the design decisions of people who work there.
“The results from the Chelsea Flower Show experiment indicate that plants, in a well-designed and personalized office environment, can boost business effectiveness through improved staff productivity and creativity,” remarked Psychologist Craig Knight from the University of Exeter. “This gives company managers a real incentive to share control of office space with their staff and create meaningful, less didactic and more grown-up space.”
