How many plants do we need for wellbeing?
About this episode
Dr. Craig Knight discusses the impact of plants and enriched environments on workplace productivity and wellbeing.
Thankfully… walk into almost any contemporary office and you are likely to find a few strategically positioned plants, a moss wall in reception or perhaps another biophilic feature intended to soften an otherwise corporate environment. Over the past decade, introducing greenery into workplaces has become almost synonymous with employee wellbeing. Yet according to workplace and environmental psychologist Dr Craig Knight, if organisations believe that adding a few plants alone will transform productivity, they have misunderstood the research. Craig's work at the University of Exeter, challenged one of the most enduring assumptions in workplace design, namely that the most productive offices are those that are minimalist and stripped back to their essentials. These highly controlled environments were long thought to minimise distraction and maximise concentration. His research demonstrated precisely the opposite. Employees working in enriched environments containing plants, artwork and opportunities for personalisation consistently performed better than those working in lean, standardised offices. “Wellbeing improved, stress reduced and productivity increased by as much as 15%.”…
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