If you have heard about the concept of biophilia, you may already know what it all means. If not, the concept is simply centered upon humans’ innate desire to connect with nature. Although humans are always building stone and glass boxes around themselves in which to work and live, there’s still the need to see and experience nature. Thus, your business should consider living floral, plants, windows which allow employees to see outside, natural colors on the walls, and more natural lighting wherever possible.
However, you may be sitting there wondering about the real benefits of biophilia. Does it make sense for you, as a site manager, to invest in creating a more biophilic-friendly office?
Ambius is the expert in biophilic design. Here, we take a look at why biophilic design makes great economic sense. If you feel your business could use some assistance in creating the perfect biophilic working environment, contact your local Ambius office today.
Biophilia helps with employee retention and reduces turnover
One of the costliest things a company has to deal with is employee turnover. It costs a lot of money to find and then re-train new employees. The second costliest thing companies experience is employees who are constantly sick. Then there’s the problem of employees who are physically present at work, but not mentally. Instead, they’re totally disengaged from what’s going on around them.
What causes this? One of the things that causes these types of problems is a phenomenon known as “sick building syndrome” or SBS. This occurs when the air inside buildings is just not healthy. But it goes beyond the air, too. Offices without much natural light, lacking in greenery or even just natural colors can give rise to SBS. Lacking easy access to the outdoors or lack of natural light can create these problems.
One of the top reasons employees disengage from their work and are not as efficient or effective as they should be is because of poor indoor air quality or environmental quality. Poor environmental quality in an office or workspace can cause depression, tiredness, lack of motivation, or even physical illness. All of this costs money in lost time, lack of efficiency and employees seeking jobs elsewhere.
An office optimized with biophilic methods and techniques can reduce this greatly. However, the right forms of biophilic design are key. But, why take the time to do all of this? Becoming biophilic costs money, right?
Biophilia is cost-efficient
Like most business decisions, it comes down to a simple cost comparison. Take a look at the books and determine what it costs to replace a highly trained and experienced employee with a new one. Before new employees are even hired, there are often accompanying recruitment costs, whether it be through paid job listings, work time lost for interviews, and more. Once a new employee is hired, they’ll likely need training…yet another cost. Separately, how much does it cost when employees are out sick all the time? What about an inefficient workforce? Is there a way to calculate that? How much re-work is being done around your office? What if all of that could be fixed using biophilic design?
When you factor in all of the costs of unhealthy employees, disengaged employees or employees looking for new jobs, adding some biophilic design techniques may not seem like such an expensive investment after all.
What are biophilic design methods?
At this point, it may be obvious that investing money into biophilia around your office has a great return on investment. Keeping employees mentally and physically healthy while also increasing employee retention is cost-efficient. Increasing creativity and worker efficiency is also key to any company, but what can do you do?
Adding plants is key, of course. Living floral improves the overall air quality inside your building. It also reduces noise and provides that connection to nature humans crave and need to stay mentally focused.
Using colors found in nature is important, too. This includes the paint on the walls, adding photos of plants and nature, adding carpeting with natural colors. All of these things help fool the brain into thinking it has that mind-nature connection and can create some of the same benefits as living plants.
Improving the light conditions around the office is important, too. If you can, increase the amount of natural light and rearrange the placement of desks and cubicles so employees have a view of the outdoors. If this is not possible, do what you can to make the light more natural and brighter where employees are, perhaps through the use of skylights or even artificial lighting designed to replicate natural lighting.
These are just some of the key components of biophilia that can improve the overall health of an office. There are many other components involved and trying to go it alone may be a challenge. This is where the biophilic design experts at Ambius come in.
Ambius can help with biophilia
Ambius experts know how to rearrange and improve your office so you get the maximum return on investment in your workplace. Whether you want to add some living floral in certain areas of the office or you want to install a full green wall, Ambius has solutions for you.
Ambius designers will work with you to create the right atmosphere. They’ll work within your current office design to do whatever can be done to implement biophilic designs and techniques at your office. The first step in all of this is to contact your local Ambius office today and start talking to one of our designers.
For further reading click the links below:
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/indoorenv/default.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212609016300140#b0595
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