Morale is one of those things you can’t see or touch, but you can sure sense if it’s high or low. High morale looks and feels like confidence, discipline, a positive attitude, and the willingness to do what needs to be done to achieve a goal. Morale is easy to bust and hard to boost.
The morale of your employees affects the way your business operates, and the overall impression that it gives to your existing and potential clients. It’s an essential element in your business’s success, which is why it’s so important to cultivate a positive atmosphere in your workplace that will foster good attitudes in your employees.
Morale is multifaceted, and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s having an impact on it. But through vigorous research, it’s becoming clear that live plants have a measurable impact on morale. Whether it’s building confidence in the employer, promoting a more comfortable, relaxing and stimulating environment, or reducing workplace illness and fatigue, there’s very little doubt that indoor plants can improve the morale of your workers.
Reducing illness
Stress, fatigue, illness, and physical discomfort all play havoc with morale. Unfortunately, our indoor lifestyles and our cramped, poorly ventilated workplaces often cause these issues—and they’re often the contributing factor in poor employee recruitment and retention and losses in productivity.
Workers in older, densely populated buildings often fare the worst. Lack of fresh air could be causing your employees to suffer dry eyes, mental fatigue, depressed mood, and respiratory discomfort and illnesses—which all translate into an impact on your bottom line.
But even in these buildings, indoor plants can help to reduce these effects: the growing body of research shows that plants make workplaces more relaxing and stimulating, more comfortable, and more healthful.
They reduce the impact and occurrence of issues like Sick Building Syndrome (SBS), and remove soluble volatile compounds from the air that cause long-term health problems including cancer. They replace moisture from air that’s been dried out by air conditioning, and oxygenate workplaces that are full of carbon dioxide from too many people sharing an enclosed space, directly influencing your workers’ physiological functioning and concentration.
Reducing your employees’ discomfort and the frequency of their illnesses could be the single most important thing you can do boost morale in your workplace—and it’s easy, just by installing indoor plants.
Besides reducing your financial losses and improving your productivity, you’ll be protecting your business’s most precious resources: your human workers.
Reducing stress
Challenging economic times and social crises are rough on morale. People worry about their jobs, finances, health care, education, and their children’s futures. Spirits fall and morale drops when there’s stress in the work environment on top of daily personal stresses—and if your business is like many others right now, you might be feeling the impact on your bottom line.
These studies, and many others like them, are contributing to a growing body of evidence pointing to indoor plants are important stress-relieving and morale-boosting inclusions in any work environment.
Building confidence
Plants have a measurable physiological effect on people that translates into better health and cognitive function.
But they also have a quantifiable psychological effect, and can be instrumental in promoting a positive corporate environment and boosting morale by fostering employees’ confidence in their company and its success.
This confidence stems from a number of factors.According to human resource professionals and experienced managers, employee morale is improved when they know that their employers value them and the work they do.
Businesses may not be able to show their appreciation with bonuses and pay raises, but they can demonstrate it in other ways: indoor plants are a good way to promote a pleasant work environment, helping the business owner to communicate their positive regard. Feeling valued results in workers who are more willing and able to perform well in their jobs, workers with higher job satisfaction, and workers with higher morale.
Psychologically, the inclusion of indoor plants fosters confidence in workers and clients and improves the overall impression of the business. It demonstrates that the business owners pay attention to details and are stable enough financially to invest in the kerb appeal of the business, and that they care enough about their image and their brand to present themselves in a positive way. In these times of global financial uncertainty, these businesses project confidence, stability, and resilience.
Promoting positivity
Recent research supports that indoor plants have psychological benefits, including lightening our moods, reducing stress, and improving concentration. They promote feelings of wellbeing and positivity, which help to build morale in the workplace.
Most people respond positively to plants, and the presence of plants actually changes the way people feel about their jobs. A study sponsored by the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) indicated that indoor plants help build morale and retain employees. The facility and corporate managers surveyed cited employee attitude and retention among the most important reasons for using plants in their buildings. These findings contribute to a growing body of research showing that live plants measurably boost employee morale and performance.
There’s a caveat though: plants must be alive and healthy to work their magic on morale. In fact, dead, dying, diseased, or otherwise unattractive plants even have a depressive effect on people: instead of bringing a feeling of life and vitality, they promote despair and hopelessness. This is often the case when employees bring in their own plants and take care of them themselves: employers might feel that it’s important to allow their workers freedom to decorate their work space as they please, but they have no control over the quality and appearance of the plants, which might be doing more harm than good to workers’ morale.
The solution to this problem is hiring office plants.By outsourcing the plant maintenance to quality plant hire services, employers can be sure their indoor plants always look their best.
Plant hire professionals maintain the plants properly to ensure optimal health and appearance, and remove and replace them as needed to maintain the positive, morale-boosting effects they bring to any space.
At Prestigious Plantscapes, our professional plant designers are trained to install visually pleasing and health-giving plantscapes, specially designed to complement or improve your decor and workplace functionality.
Contact us any time to find out more, and we’ll be happy to show you how we can help boost the health and morale of your workers and protect your business’s most important asset.
