The Call of Nature
Office greenery enhances productivity and retention. What can we do to bring more nature into the workplace?Get out much?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, probably not. They estimate the average American spends 93% of their day indoors — 87% of that in buildings and 6% in vehicles. It wouldn’t surprise us if the UK fared the same or worse on that front.
Of that precious 7% we have left, the amount of that spent in nature is likely to be very low, despite studies showing that humans value and benefit from exposure to nature, even as little as five minutes a day.
Getting outside to fondle some ferns can seem a pretty distant priority for many of us. It sounds nice, but that’s about as far as it goes. If you work in a city, you might not have easy access to nature, even to a park.
To do lists have things like “Pick up milk” and “Call plumber”. “Hug a tree” doesn’t make the cut unless your name is Gaia Miracle McMoonbeam.
But if getting outside is too difficult, perhaps we can bring the outside… in.
The Great Indoors
They call it “biophilic” design. That’s life-loving to you non-Greeks.
One example opened yesterday in East London. In Hoxton Square, it’s called a ‘tree office’; a transparent walled office built in a tree canopy.
Pretty cool. But there are more modest ways to incorporate nature indoors.
Plants
Yep, a big shocker this one. There are several ways you can bring low-maintenance plants into office space. Potted plants, window boxes, and some offices can even accommodate wall creepers.
Plants purify the air (air quality is worse indoors than outdoors), and promote well-being and creativity by up to 15% in those who work nearby. Large plants can also help to muffle noise, one of the biggest bugbears in office environments.
You can find many suggestions online, but here are a few to get you started.
Fauna
Some offices allow pets at work, or even have pets of their own. Spiders, cats, tortoises, goldfish — there’s a huge variety to suit every kind of office. Here are some positive office pet experiences. Unsurprisingly, having an office pet can help to bust stress, and even improve efficiency.
We like to let our pet cobras have the run of the office.
Light
Almost half of office workers actually work with little to no natural light, and generally speaking, those that lack it want it.
Not only is it kinder on the eyes than artificial light, it also helps regulate the body’s natural rhythm, and prevents SAD syndrome. One study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine says that ‘architects need to be aware of the importance of natural light not only in terms of their potential energy savings but also in terms of affecting occupants’ health.’
The study recommends that desks be no further than 20-25 feet away from source of natural light, as this is the distance that it fades over.
Trickery
If you really have to work in a dark box without any living matter in 50 feet around you, that’s a tough break. But there are options even for you. The human body is thankfully quite easy to fool in a number of ways.
Having bright, natural colours on the walls can help attain similar benefits to having real nature. Not only that, but simply having large pictures of nature is almost as good as the real thing. Big prints of waterfalls and forest scenes can still have a calming effect.
There are also a number of resources available online for rain sounds and wildlife noises, which all can do a pretty good job of reassuring your primitive caveman brain that everything is fine and dandy.
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