Achieving integrated sustainability through work stress reduction with biophilic office design

The thesis that incorporating nature elements like plants and green walls within workplaces is likely to enhance employees’ well-being and performance has resulted in a plethora of studies. However, most of these studies have focused on direct or indirect nature exposure and either its social or economic impacts. There is therefore limited understanding of how different types of nature exposure collectively contributes to social and economic sustainability through workplace design. The aim of this paper is to present an integrated framework for achieving sustainability through employees’ exposure to nature within office work environments. A systematic review process was employed in this study, which retrieved relevant peer-reviewed journal articles from the multidisciplinary scientific research database, Scopus, using several keyword combinations. Findings of the review suggest that the impact of different types of nature exposure are complementary and can be leveraged to optimise employees’ well-being and work performance. The proposed integrated sustainability framework has three levels including environment (direct and indirect nature exposure), social (indoor air quality, thermal comfort and enhanced relaxation) and economic (employee performance and productivity). This conceptual framework should be of interest to workplace researchers, designers and employers looking to leverage nature exposure to optimise employees’ well-being and performance.