better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

Office Flower Power

25 March 2019

Do you like flowers? Can you name more than 20 different sorts of flower, in under a minute? Go on, see if you can!

I can’t. I do like flowers; I know the yellow ones are called daffodils and the red ones are roses …and that’s about it. I buy them based on colour and visual appeal, without troubling myself to actually know what I’m buying. Maybe I like the mystery of it, which is another way of saying I’m happily ignorant.

However, flowers do brighten up a kitchen and I often have the yellow ones (see above) on my table in Springtime.

It’s the same with offices. Flowers and green plants (I have no names to offer here) make a difference. They soften hard edges and can bring a sense of calm to the workplace.

Calm is good. It promotes well-being at work and is part of increasing mental health. Obviously, we can’t simply throw a couple of pot plants at our employees and hope they will all be well (the employees, not the plants). What we can do though is pay attention to the office environment.

Is it clean? Do people have decent chairs to sit on? Are workstations properly set up, or are monitors perched on telephone directories? (Which seems to be the only use for them these days).

What are the restrooms like? Is the reception area welcoming, or Spartan?

If the office was a school, would you want your children to go there?

Does it stimulate productivity, with equipment within easy reach? Or does it cause friction, as people queue for the photocopier/printer?

I’m always amazed at how an organisation will hire someone and then pay for them to stand around waiting for something to print out. We talk about the paperless office, but what about the queue-free office?

Well-being at work starts with our environment. So, this week we can all take a fresh look at the space we work in and see what improvements can be made. Perhaps start with a few yellow flowers, to brighten things up?

Next week: Organisational BS!