Can you really increase employees' productivity levels by changing office design? All businesses would like to see their productivity rates improve, but what actually makes a difference? While architects have long insisted that design can have a much greater impact than purely on a functional or visual level, a number of studies now support the view that certain office features can really have a positive, or negative, impact on our productivity levels.

Office jungle

It has become popular to advise workers to explore nature in their lunch hours in order to ease stress and take time out of the workplace, but what if businesses were to build it into the office environment? A study by Harvard University found that improved indoor environmental quality, that is the existence of plants, doubled occupants' cognitive function test scores. These findings are being put into practice across the world, including at the new headquarters of Apple in California. There, approximately 10,000 trees have been planted across the campus in a bid to increase employees' access to nature and thus aid their productivity levels.

Related: Why your office is beginning to look like a forest