71–80 of 94 posts
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I'd rather the company divide up the plant costs and give it to the employees. If an individual wants to spend it on a plant for their desk, great. I feel like this for most benefits btw.
I did a back of the envelope calculation. If we got rid of our plants and plant-waterers, I would expect to see about 60p extra in my monthly salary.
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They have been a way to try to raise morale without making any meaningful change, addressing root causes, or spending a significant amount of money. If management does address the actual problems and they add plants, that would probably be a good sign--but that's never been my experience.
i see what your saying- management that uses plants as a solution is probably shitty, so presence of plants increases the likelihood of shitty management. thats a weird thing that should have a name, seems like people in statistics would run into that more than once. so some variable is positively correlated with satisfaction, but also positively correlated with a variable that is negatively correlated with satisfact…
Cause and effect are reversed here - people who are happy and capable at a good enjoyable place to work often decide to bring plants in because they feel empowered to do so and have latitude to do it. Aping them by putting plants in front of disempowered bored workers will not help.
Personally I don't care one way or the other. As long as it's cool, clean, relatively quiet, and I have a comfortable chair and a nice keyboard I'm good. But I don't put up any pictures or nicknacks either. I guess I prefer clutter free space.
Funny enough, when the plants show up, in my experience it's a bad sign. I have no proof this conversation happened at the last two places I worked... but I'm pretty sure it did happen. Upper-level manager #1: "The results of the employee morale survey are back. Morale is at an all time low. The employees feel that upper-level management is clueless, they are increasingly unable to do their jobs efficiently because o…
An interesting alternate approach I was privy to and liked joining was a weekly 'spruce up the office meeting' where some of the management team would discuss upcoming holidays (how to best fit employee needs), decorations, budgets allocated to 'team building' events (more often than not - give the staff the money and have them provide a receipt for somewhere they've spent it), who has a birthday coming up, etc. Discussion of plants was included too. Team prizes, award certificates. I definitely recommend trying such a weekly approach and seeing if it works. We did ours on a Friday afternoon, where everyone was itching to get going as it was; pretty fun and relaxed.
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That sucks... I'm not even sure that a plant or eight would make that kind of hell hole any better. I'm happy to be in a country where it's actually illegal to make people work in rooms without windows.
Curious- what country? I didn't think there was anywhere that would actually make that illegal. Does that hold true everywhere, such as in industrial/manufacturing complexes, etc?
Funny enough, when the plants show up, in my experience it's a bad sign. I have no proof this conversation happened at the last two places I worked... but I'm pretty sure it did happen. Upper-level manager #1: "The results of the employee morale survey are back. Morale is at an all time low. The employees feel that upper-level management is clueless, they are increasingly unable to do their jobs efficiently because o…
That's probably true as far as it goes, but they probably should have been there all along. If the plants disappear because management decides they are too expensive, start your new job search immediately.
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It does well indoors, but does it do well with 100% florescent light? My guess would be no. From experience they do grow, though slowly, indoors with low natural light coming in, so if you were near a window they would be a good choice.
There is more than one plant with the common name "mother-in-law's tongue." I think OP might have been referring to Dieffenbachia sp. which is a tropical rainforest understory plant and does very well in the low light conditions of an office. [It's leaves contain very large amounts of oxalic acid which is probably why it got the name -- eat the leaves and your tongue swells up and you can't talk anymore...]