Study’s finding challenges the belief that money spent on plants in an office environment is money wasted

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The office pot plant has often been criticised as a symbol of corporate or government waste. Taxpayer, ratepayer and shareholder-funded foliage has regularly been stripped from offices by efficiency or cost-cutting crusaders.

But that might be short-term thinking, as leafy-green offices enriched with plants can boost productivity by 15%, according to Alex Haslam of University of Queensland’s School of Psychology.

An international study assesses the long-term impacts of plants in an office environment and the findings challenge the belief that money spent on plants is money wasted.

Prof Haslam, a co-author, said the research team examined the impact of “lean” versus “green” office space on employees from two large commercial offices in the UK and the Netherlands.

Their results challenge modern business philosophies that suggest a lean office is a more productive one, Haslam said.

“Modern offices and desks have been stripped back to create sparse spaces – our findings question this widespread theory that less is more – sometimes less is just less,” he said.

He said that investing in office landscaping may pay off through an increase in office workers’ quality of life and productivity.

“Lean, it appears, is meaner than green, not only because it is less pleasant but also because it is less productive,” concludes the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.