A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA by coursework and Research Report in the field of Organisational Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities.
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
March 2016There is international growing evidence to support the notion that indoor planters positively impact employees’ emotional states, personal health, work engagement as well as their overall perceptions of their work environment and ultimately impacting employee productivity. However this ground-breaking research has never been conducted within a South African Work Environment. Consequently the following study adopts a quasi-experimental study in order to investigate the impact that indoor plants may have on employee physical well-being, psychological well-being, work engagement and their overall perception of their work environment. Furthermore, the researcher aimed to assess whether the employees connectedness to nature influenced the impact the plants had on them, thus assessing how this covariate may impact the relationship between the absence and presence of plants and the above mentioned dependent variables. A Sample of 32 Global Service Management Centre (GSMC) employees from an internationally recognised organisation, Business Connexion, were assessed over a period of 12 weeks. The first assessment was conducted in the no plant condition, while the final assessment was conducted once the plants were installed in the whole office area. Additionally, SE Controls were positioned throughout the office area in order to measure the fluctuations of the air quality once the planters were installed. The results of a series of Wilcoxon Sign Rank Tests as well as Spearman’s Rank Order Correlations indicated no significant results; however upon closer evaluations of the individual scale items the researcher identified several statistically significant results that were unpacked and discussed. The readings from the SE Controls indicated either an improvement or stabalisation of the air quality variables that were being assessed in the current study.GR201
