Learning at work is important, for many people their jobs are the only place available to them for learning, development and the feeling of progressing, especially those with families. Consistently building up your team’s skill-sets is also a huge asset for your company that can boost morale and employee engagement. The flip side of not learning in the workplace – your employees may feel demotivated and unhappy with the lack of progress and personal development they’re making at work, and this of course is not good.
Your staff’s focus and the ability to learn also relies heavily on your office’s environment. If you’ve ever tried to work in a noisy, uncomfortable or unpleasant office space, you’ll likely know how difficult it is to concentrate under such conditions. As humans, we find it difficult to learn without the basics – a happy, well-lit environment with plenty of fresh air.
Plants make employees feel comfortable
If your staff don’t feel as comfortable in the office as they do in their homes, their focus, ability to learn and output will likely be lower than their real potential. When we dig deeper in the factors that make it hard to focus and learn at work, common issues include:
1. Fatigue
Every expert will tell you that coffee and sugar laden foods aren’t the answer to creating a lively, productive team. This can easily be seen by looking at your team members with the highest energy levels – they’re likely regular exercisers who eat well and love the outdoors.
2. Illness
Providing good lighting, promoting regular short breaks and plenty of fresh air are proven ways to keep your staff healthier and more focused. Once one of your team gets ill, you’ll likely see the chain reaction quickly take place and productivity drops as result. This can be extra concerning if you have sales, project managers or support people that get ill, as your client relationships rely on these team members.
3. Noise
While some staff can focus while listening to music or meditation sounds, general clutter and noise can quickly distract an employee’s attention and ability to learn. If you’ve noticed staff wearing headphones to block out office noise, then this is a red flag.
4. Stress
While different people cope with stress and challenging situations in their own ways, you can be sure that stress does not lead to employees learning or producing their best work. Providing your team with a comfortable, safe and relaxed work environment can go a long way to reducing stress and improving focus and learning.
5. Negative Outlook
In recent years, many companies have introduced “hot desking”, stand up desks and other initiatives to keep their staff positive and focused – often called increasing the ‘office vibe’. But with these initiatives, your team may still be feeling trapped and as if they’re not moving forward as a result of being surrounded by the same four walls.
Experts and researchers have been studying how office pants are one cost effective way to combat all of these 5 challenges, to increase your team’s focus, ability to learn and productivity.
Office plants improve employee focus
Indoor plants are proven to enhance our ability to focus. One study in a Netherland’s tax office found that indoor plants improved concentration significantly, another study found people working at a computer for over four hours a day are more productive when plants are nearby.
Like learning, another thing to consider is the growing evidence that plants increase our capacity for creative thinking because plants influence employees perceptions of their workplaces, and improve their attitudes toward their jobs.
Plants influence an employee’s perception of their job.
Participants in a study conducted at the University of Michigan showed improved alertness, happiness, and tranquillity after just an hour of interacting with plants. According to researcher Marc Berman, “Interacting with nature can have similar effects as meditating.” Plants provide a focal point of interest, help stimulate the mind and keep it alert, all factors required for learning and focus.
Your office’s air quality directly impacts your staff’s health
By cleaning the air, indoor plants enhance our comfort and health, which facilitates focus and learning.
Start reducing your office’s noise with plants
Plants are highly effective noise buffers. Plants can quickly absorb and remove sound and the background noise when placed strategically in the right places around the office. Noise is a constant trait in most offices due to team chat, phone chatter, your lunchroom, staff’s computers, footsteps on hard floors, visitors, air-conditioning systems and the list goes on.
Noise can be distractive and make employees less productive, and just as detrimental, impact the customer experience.
Office plants provide a welcoming environment while reducing unwanted office noise, and they also help provide privacy by physically separating your employees from each other, all factors to reducing distraction and improving focus and learning.
Office plants can quickly improve office vibe
A drab and dreary office can be the most toxic place you can put a person into, says psychologist Dr Chris Knight from Exeter University, who has been studying the issue for 10 years. Collaborating with four universities in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands over the course of a year and a half, Dr Chris Knight and his colleagues visited a number of workplaces across Europe as part of his research.
What they found by running a number of experiments, including stripping offices of all the niceness, is that companies that are consistently improving their office space and work environment, including with simple office plants, see productivity improvements of up to 15%. Dr Chris Knight found that when plants are brought into an office, employees happiness, performance and memory retention improved substantially.
This is rather remarkable when you consider the financial impact – if you provide office plants for just 7 employees, the increased employee output could be same as hiring another team member.
Indoor plant hire is cost effective, chat to us today
Indoor plants are a cost-effective way to improve your employee’s ability to learn and output. Office plants are portable and a low-maintenance way to improving the quality of your office’s air and make your office a happier, more positive place to work.
At Prestigious Plantscapes, our plant designers will determine the best varieties of indoor plants to achieve clean air and an office vibe that lends itself to your staff being more productive. Part of what we do is work out the best places to place the indoor plants to achieve a striking aesthetic look that will bring out the best in your team.
