<story><title>Plants in offices increase happiness and productivity</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/31/plants-offices-workers-productive-minimalist-employees</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>IvyMike</author><text>Funny enough, when the plants show up, in my experience it&amp;#x27;s a bad sign.  I have no proof this conversation happened at the last two places I worked... but I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure it did happen.&lt;p&gt;Upper-level manager #1: &amp;quot;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 of process and bureaucracy, and the raises we gave this year were below industry average.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Upper-level manager #2: &amp;quot;I just googled &amp;#x27;how to raise morale&amp;#x27; and it said &amp;#x27;plants&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Upper-level manager #1: &amp;quot;Let&amp;#x27;s do that!&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Plants in offices increase happiness and productivity</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/31/plants-offices-workers-productive-minimalist-employees</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>GFischer</author><text>I really hope they took the Hawthorne effect into account:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hawthorne_effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure if it&amp;#x27;s the plants themselves which generated the positive change, or whether anything else (paintings, something personal&amp;#x2F;warm) would have generated a similar response.&lt;p&gt;And while I rant about my awful working conditions, at least I don&amp;#x27;t have my keyboard fixed into place !!</text></comment>