Tags: Design, Office, Plants

Planters, Containers and Your Office Aesthetic

When we talk about biophilia, we are referring to how adding plants and nature to your working environment can help staff to feel happy, creative and more productive all at the same time, but did you know that changing up the container of a plant can drastically change its appearance? In this article, we consider the effects that different containers can bring to plants and how we can match them to your business’ aesthetic.

Planting Can Change How You Feel & Behave

Smart biophilic design can create a workplace which improves employee performance, health and wellbeing. For many, the aesthetic of their office may seem like a luxury that should be the last thing to be considered in current financial climates, but when it comes to biophilic design, you should be asking yourself whether your business can afford not to implement these strategies.

It’s well known that some of the biggest businesses in the world use biophilic design to maximise their output. Google, Amazon and Apple are all filled to the brim with plants, living walls and health schemes, and when you consider the statistics that plants in the office make you 15% more productive, you can understand why. Can your company afford to be losing out on that 15%?

By adding just a few desk plants to your office environment, you can positively alter the aesthetic to benefit your employees. It’s not all down to desk plants, however, as you should also try to maximise natural light, natural materials and scenic views if you’re lucky enough to have any.

If you have any further questions regarding biophilia, we recommend that you read one of our blogs on the subject:

Biophilia – What Is It and Why Is It Important?

Biophilic Design in the Workplace

Biophilia White Paper

How Containers Can Change Plants

Plants come in all shapes and sizes, and the containers they come in can also substantially alter their image, whether you’re looking for plants which add a bit of fun and colour, or something a little more sophisticated which exudes style in the lobby or meeting room, we have it all.

For example, a group of bespoke ‘statement’ planters, like the ones in the image at the top of this blog, in a variety of finishes and in a complimentary colour palette can provide the perfect finishing touch to a space and can tie a design scheme together perfectly. Whilst some fresh white planters with a mix of different plant specimens can add light and vibrancy to an office that might otherwise feel too corporate.

We can source almost any plant or container, so you are limited only by your imagination. We can even match containers and planters to your company’s corporate colour-scheme.

Move on to the next section for some examples of beautiful plant containers that you could enjoy from your office soon:

Attractive Containers Made to Inspire

Planters and containers come in all shapes and sizes. Tiny planters can be dotted around on desks and reception areas to create a homely feel, adding detail that shows you care, and allowing all your colleagues to benefit from biophilia. Small planters are perfect for succulents which are very popular at the moment and come in a wide variety, and in different shades. A selection has been used in the workspace below, with stunning effect, in this ‘industrial design’ style using a palette of black, stone and copper:

– Artistic Design Using Mixed Planting

These plants work especially well on a smaller budget, and they show just how important quality products and design planning are when incorporating plants in your décor.

– The Perfect Partner to the ‘Industrial Design’ Trend

Staying with the Industrial Design trend, this image showcases the benefits of vertical storage for getting those biophilic themes into your office or social space. This plethora of planting is bright, vibrant and friendly, which is sure to motivate and brighten the day of anyone using the area. The containers for these plants are uniform which juxtaposes with the individual nature of each plant in the frame, contrasting the symmetry against the soft natural greenery.

The use of mirrors at the back of the space also maximises the amount of light in the area and gives the illusion of doubling the number of plants, further proving that quality of product and smart planning can go a very long way to creating the perfect biophilic atmosphere.

– Pots on Legs

Pots with Legs are all the rage! We love them too. These containers stand out, and you can choose from brass, wood or metal for contrast to the pot colour. Plants are elevated to a new height and given the same status as a prized piece of art. This trend brings a sense of class to the plants, giving them a modern edge that would look stylish in almost any room. There are plenty of innovative ideas, so don’t doubt that we can find something to suit your setting.

We can provide a range of planters and containers in any colour and a variety of sizes. The only thing limiting you is your imagination, and we can offer you our design assistance to help overcome any struggles with space or budget. Simply contact us for more information regarding our indoor plants.

Tags: Happiness, Office, Workplace wellness

The Importance of Holding Social Events

Creating a thriving community and a great culture in your business can’t be done by words alone. Having a great intranet and communicating by email is important, but nothing is more important than human relationships and the feeling of belonging and socialising. In this article, we uncover the secrets behind holding a social event that your people will love to attend, and why it is a worthwhile thing to do.

Why You Should Be Socialising

There are a few ways to reduce stress in the office, such as filling your space with beautiful office plants, but you should know that holding the occasional social event can also go a long way towards reducing tensions in your office environment. The Guardian even suggests that social events in the workplace could be vital to finding happiness at work, they include the following quote by Geoff Pearce as the parting message of their article:

“HR teams can have a huge impact on company culture and employee satisfaction. Team-building days, social events and ensuring a pleasant office environment – all are vital to happiness at work and creating a community spirit among colleagues.”

We can help you to create a pleasant office environment through our plant design service and also with office flowers, but the rest largely depends on you and your HR team. Our blog is here to help you with hints and tips on how to secure a strong community to promote higher staff retention and engagement.

We’ve already written blogs on world health and what workers really want, but this blog is dedicated to helping you host some amazing social events that have positive effects for both physical and mental health.

BBQ

We aren’t strangers to hosting fabulous social events and BBQ season is a shared favourite amongst our employees. A good BBQ is one that can cater to all your staff’s dietary needs, which means including Quorn burgers as well as regular beef. Making each and every one of your staff feel cared for is extremely important when hosting a social event, otherwise, you may end up highlighting the differences between your staff rather than successfully bringing them together.

BBQ’s are best when the weather is fine and everyone can relax outdoors, being weather dependent, it’s a good idea to name a week in which you are planning to host the BBQ and take the first good day that you come across. Hosting the BBQ during an extended lunch in working hours is a great idea for ensuring a good turn-out.

Here are some of our staff enjoying our delicious BBQ event:

Forest Bathing

The less intimidating version of an office hike, forest bathing is a promising new trend that seeks to reduce stress and tension in individuals by bringing them closer to nature. It is a relaxing activity that can reduce heart rate and blood pressure, as well as allowing people time to breathe healthy fresh air.

This activity is simple enough, just take your office to a nearby green area and encourage everyone to wander off in whichever route strikes their fancy. The aim is to enjoy exploring nature, as well as taking some time to reflect on your emotional well-being. Give your employees a time to be back by and regroup at the end of the day to discuss how forest bathing helped them to focus and improve their energy levels.

Lunch and Learns

Looking for a joint experience with added benefits? Then you may consider hosting a lunch and learn event. These socials are made to enhance your employee’s wider knowledge of your company or industry through presentations given by staff or industry experts. They can be a good opportunity to network too if you plan in time for a buffet lunch and some informal conversations after the event. If you want to learn more about how to set up an effective Lunch and Learn, you can read more about it on our blog.

Extra Ideas

Generally, getting your staff outside is one of the best things you can do, especially if the weather is warm. Why not go for a double whammy with some charity fund-raising? A sponsored run or a softball game? Some other activities that can help your staff to connect with one another in the fresh air include setting up an office picnic, or how about a round of crazy golf or croquet? If an adventure sounds good to you or you think it would appeal to the colleagues of your business, then some other outdoor activities that may interest you are kayaking and zorbing. If the weather is bad, then you can use Escape Rooms as an alternative to your outdoor plans – Escape Rooms are a great way to test your co-workers’ deduction skills and keep them on their toes!

Last year, Forbes created an article about office environments which stated that ‘strong social connections make people happier and physically healthier, which can translate into work performance’. Combine a few effective socials with a beautiful office refurbishment and you might find that your investments in your team sees a return in future output. If you have any questions regarding improving your office environments with plants, please contact us. For any other hints and tips regarding office life, check back here for future blogs and articles.

Tags: Biophilia, Office, Workplace wellness

Mental Health Awareness and World WellBeing Week

Understanding those struggling with mental health issues is integral to building a business that can promote equal opportunities. In this article, we consider this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme, and how to avoid stress and friction in the workplace. We also talk about how you can help those who are suffering from mental health issues to create a comfortable workplace that promotes balance and wellbeing.

The average British employee will work for 34 hours and 26 minutes a week, making it extremely important to create a working environment which promotes health and wellbeing. World WellBeing Week starts on June 24th this year, so let’s endeavour to change for the better together.

This Year’s Theme – Body Image

Mental Health Awareness Week has been running since 2001 and every year brings a different aspect of mental health issues to the centre of the public’s attention. Most people go through a phase of struggling with body image at some point in their lives, especially teenagers, but body image problems aren’t felt by teenagers alone.

In both the UK and Australia, in 2016, only 20 per cent of women between the ages of 10 and 60 admitted to having high self-esteem about how they looked. If you think that body image isn’t important to the workforce, then we’re asking you to think again; some of those in the 80% with low self-esteem even confessed to skipping job interviews because they felt they had a poor body image.

Managing Stress in the Workplace

While Mental Health Awareness Week this year was focused on improving conceptions about body image, the underlying thread of every campaign is that stress can be deadly and often leads to other mental health issues, including body image problems which in turn can lead to eating disorders and poor physical health.

It is important to create a working environment where your staff can thrive and you can do this by targeting those stresses which are distracting them from both feeling well and performing at their best. If you agree that working whilst suffering from physical pain leads to an impaired performance, then you should agree that forcing body image standards that are mentally unhealthy need to be overturned. This may include catering for disabled staff and clients in your establishment by reconsidering the facilities that you have available to encourage the notion that all bodies are welcomed.

Along with World Wellbeing Day on June 22nd, World WellBeing Week calls for businesses and individuals to take a more critical stance regarding their social, physical, emotional, financial and environmental wellbeing. You can show that you value your employees by pursuing these goals, and – if you succeed – you may even find yourself taking part in the annual WellBeing Festival in the future as an award holder of the ‘Leaders in Wellbeing’ ceremony.

Other Ideas for Managing Mental Health

If you are questioning what you can do to help those struggling with mental health issues, then you should first know that even those who are diagnosed with the same problem could have very different experiences and symptoms. This means that it is most important to stay open to new ideas when trying to provide support; what works for one may not work for another.

Our focus on improving office environments and reducing stress in the workplace means that we have a fair few general ideas that could help to create at least the best physical environment to nurture workers and improve wellbeing. Bear in mind that not all the following ideas will suit everyone, but perhaps everyone will find one idea that appeals to them:

Biophilic Design

It is a well-known fact that staying in contact with the natural world can help to improve emotional stability. Modern humans suffer from a lack of connection with nature, but you can put that right by bringing nature into your place of work.

The concept of biophilic design is about mindfully connecting humans to nature in the build environment, by including natural daylighting, by adding plants to your place of work, and including biomorphic design and furnishings which mimic nature. Many studies have proved that this design practice has the added benefits of improving creativity and productivity.

If you’re interested in reading more about Biophilia, you can read our blog, Biophilia – What is it and why is it important?

Shinrin Yoku

We recently wrote a blog about how Forest Bathing can really help individuals to escape from their daily stresses. You could encourage your employees to engage in this technique to decrease building stress, increase balance and improve focus at work.

If your office is located near a green space, like a park, you could encourage staff to go for a walk there during breaks to cool off and take in the beautiful nature surrounding them.

Healthy Benefits

Many modern businesses offer their staff perks for staying with the company, and you can show that you care about your staff by providing them with useful perks that encourage good health. Mental and physical health are more closely linked than people think; for example, those struggling with depression often find it difficult to get out and exercise, which can eventually lead to poor self-care routines, which can further feed feelings of depression and isolation.

By supplying your staff with healthy perks like gym memberships and healthy office snacks, you are encouraging your staff to take care of themselves, and this could improve their confidence in both their general health as well as their body image.

How We Can Improve Your Office Space with Plants and Flowers

Planteria aim to make it as easy as possible to include plants and flowers into workspace. We can help you with design ideas, carry out the installation and then take care of your plants, to create an office that is formal yet comfortable, stylish as well as productive. Office flowers make a beautiful first impression for your reception area and set the tone that this is an organisation that cares about its people and their wellbeing. We can consider the layout of your office to help you to find the perfect plants for your office environment, whether that’s spacious or small, lacking in natural light or bright and sunny. We have also written about other ways to Reduce Work-Related Stress which you can read about on our blog.

Planteria’s Success with Mount Media

Impress both your employees and your clients by working with us to create somewhere stunning, healthier and more productive, and keep coming back to our blog to read the latest news and tips about how to craft the best office environments – physically, mentally and socially. Working with us is a stress-free journey towards improving your business.

Tags: Office, Plants, Tips & Advice, Workplace

The Top 5 Plants for Your Office

Everyone who has ever worked in an office knows that plants and flowers add to the atmosphere of a workplace. The buzz of background noise can not only be distracting, but can also increase levels of stress – particularly in open-plan offices where space is at a premium. You can reduce noise problems with plants because they absorb sound, making your office quieter and calmer.

Positioning plants in strategic locations around your office will create natural sound barriers. Even if you’re not buying plants for their sound reduction benefits, their potential to improve staff productivity and well-being means that even the smallest tree could work wonders for your office. This was discovered by a research experiment at Texas A&M University, which explored the link between flowers, plants and workplace productivity during an eight-month study.

Those taking part in the study performed creative problem solving tasks in a workplace with plants and flowers, a setting with sculptures, and an environment with no additional planting or decoration at all.

Participants were found to demonstrate more innovative thinking and generate more ideas and original solutions to problems in the office that included plants and flowers. Men who participated in the study generated 15% more ideas, whilst women generated more creative, flexible solutions to problems when plants and flowers were present.

With this in mind, we thought we’d share with you the top 5 office plants requested by our clients.

1. Sansevieria Fernwood or Sansevieria Mikado

Sansevieria is a genus of about 70 species of flowering plants, native to Africa, Madagascar and southern Asia. Common names include snake plant, mother-in-law’s tongue, devil’s tongue, jinn’s tongue, bow string hemp and snake tongue. These are great air purifiers, making them perfect for offices.

2. Succulents

These plants have thick and fleshy leaves which are used to retain water in the arid climates where they are native. The word “succulent” comes from the Latin word sucus, meaning juice, or sap. They come in a variety of sizes, colours and shades, which can allow for many beautiful combinations.

3. Phalaenopsis Orchid

Also known as moth orchids, phalaenopsis is one of the most popular indoor orchids and is native to southern China, Taiwan, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Queensland. These elegant plants make a real impact on an office environment, and are fairly hard to kill – great for a busy office!

4. Ficus Ginseng (bonsai)

Ginseng bonsai are also known as ficus retusa, Banyan fig or ficus ginseng. Bonsai art appeared over a millennium ago in the Chinese Empire and was then known as Penzai. It was later adapted by the Japanese and its popularity spread all across South-East Asia. These are probably the most famous and easily recognised bonsai trees and are easy to care for.

5. Dracaena Lemon & Lime (branched)

Native throughout Africa and also known as ‘Dragon Tree Lemon and Lime’, their brightly coloured leaves are a sight for sore eyes in a dreary office on a Monday morning. These plants can get quite tall; we recommend placing one or two around the corners of your office so that they are visible without taking up too much room.

Think of your interior designs as investments in your staff – you’ll start to see some returns when their productivity increases. Improving the atmosphere of your office has never been easier, there are so many varieties and styles of planting available. So if you like the look of these ever popular favourites, you’re looking for something different, or you have haven’t a clue where to start, contact us to find out more about our office plants for hire and our selection of flowers for offices, we’ll help you pick out the perfect plants for you.

Tags: Biophilic design, Office

Top Tips for an Office Make-Over

FUNCTIONAL FITTINGS

Interior design trends for 2020 are all about functional fittings. In the home, this translates to tidy rooms with pull-out furniture like sofa-beds, futons and extending tables. In the office, this translates to adjustable desks, so you can work sitting or standing, laptops for work away from headquarters and partitions for privacy between teams.

When brainstorming ideas for your office make-over, a good place to start is by improving what you already have. For example, if you make use of basic office partitions between desks, why not use desk plants instead? Office plants have been proven to boost productivity and creativity, so doing something as simple as swapping out your partitions for greenery could see an increase in your returns down the line.

Adding office plants to your workspace is a magnificent way to transform it into a desirable place to work. Eco-themes are the future; they are an easy and affordable way to instantly upgrade an area and with a huge variety of plants to choose from they will have a unique feel.

It might seem obvious to some, but making sure that office supplies and useful items are in a designated and central location can save employees a lot of time, especially when inducting new employees, to whom the office is a strange new place. When rearranging your office, it’s a good idea to try to avoid moving these key supplies so that your workers can stay orientated.

STAFF PERKS

Think about why you are engaging in an office make-over; if you are doing it to impress clients, then you want something stunning, but if you are hoping to increase work quality and output amongst your staff, then you might be more interested in adding some facilities that they will surely appreciate.

Perhaps you can improve on the simple staff kettle that most (if not all) businesses have somewhere on their premises. The point of tea breaks – from an employer’s perspective – is to encourage organic team building opportunities. You can further improve the relationships between your staff by providing them with access to gym facilities or making use of outdoor spaces to create a roof terrace, or courtyard with cafe style seating. We all recognise the benefits of encouraging a cohesive team that supports itself. If you already provide these facilities to your staff, it’s always good to rethink how your staff are using the facilities. An influx of new employees might mean that the facilities you provide aren’t as relevant as they were before.

ADD A DASH OF COLOUR

Is your office exciting enough? Take an objective look about.

Is it a generic space with white walls and a grey carpet? Being bold and adding some striking colour to a few feature walls, or areas of the office space will give your office a fresh new feel. You could strengthen your brand identity by using a palette in your brand colours. Accent colours used in planters, soft furnishings and artwork will give the new scheme a pulled-together cohesive look.

Colour is a visual experience and actually has a subconscious effect on the brain. Colour in the workplace has an effect on productivity, mood and emotion. Warm colours like reds and oranges are known to raise energy levels and improve dynamism. Cool colours like blues and greens are shown to create a calming effect and improve critical thinking.Repainting your office and changing up the colours from time to time will ensure the office always looks fresh and clean and your colleagues will appreciate the effort that you put into providing them with a beautiful place to work in.

GREAT LIGHTING

Above all else, if you are going to be making improvements to your office, you should always consider the effects of your lighting.

We doubt that you’re submitting your staff to dodgy fluorescent lights that blinks on and off, but any inadequate lighting is unhelpful and could be costing your employees in new glasses prescriptions. We recommend offices with lots of natural light, but if you can’t remedy being in a dim office with very few windows, you can always supplement the existing natural light by adding mirrors to carry the light further by reflecting it. As well as prioritising sources of natural light, you should use lamps and high-quality light bulbs to make sure that your office shines.

The perfect office is possible; all you need are plants, perks, a touch of colour and some great lighting. We are more than happy to provide you with the plants, planters in every hue, and take care of them for you too. To give your office a boost that outstrips your competitors, get in touch.