Plant life boosts office wellbeing

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Office plants can help boost staff wellbeing by up to 47%, according to research carried out at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

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Visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show were challenged to take part in the study which measured their creativity, happiness and productivity as they experienced a range of different workspace designs.

The study, designed by the Identity Realisation research group at the University of Exeter, in association with Indoor Garden Design, compared people’s effective output across different types of business space. 90 experiments took place across the week and involved a total of 350 participants.

The results showed that allowing staff to make design decisions in a workspace enhanced with office plants can increase well-being by 47%, increase creativity by 45% and increase productivity by 38%.

Psychologist Dr Craig Knight, from the University of Exeter, said: “The results from the Chelsea Flower Show experiment indicate that plants, in a well designed and personalised office environment can boost business effectiveness through improved staff productivity and creativity.

“This gives company managers a real incentive to share control of office space with their staff and create meaningful, les didactic and more grown-up space.”

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