As your business grows, you may also want to grow other stuff in it. Such as plants and other leafy organisms.

However, as an employer you have a duty of care to your employees. And that extends to supplying plants (fake or otherwise) to liven up your working environment, along with other stuff such as allowing chewing gum at work.

Specifically, what happens if you introduce fake (i.e. plastic) plants into your office? There are many serious ramifications surrounding this issue.

It’s essential your business considers these laws, otherwise you may be bankrupt within weeks of buying a fake potted plant.

The Law on Fake Plants at Work

The employment law surrounding fake plants at work is governed by the Fake (Plastic & Otherwise) Plants at Work Act 1972.

On page 667, section 32.1 indicates:

“Fake plants in the workplace are legal. They may consist of plastic or other materials deemed non-fatal to human beings.

Materials deemed fatal (and, therefore, inappropriate) for fake plants are as follows:

a) Asbestos.

b) Nuclear waste.

c) Semtex.

d) Jam (that’s made with any of the above materials).

Employers found to be using the likes of nuclear waste as fake plants will be liable for a sound telling off. “

Plastic plants are by far the most popular variety for employers to use in an office environment.

The benefits of using such decor can be tremendous for employee productivity.

Even in the deepest fit of chronic despair due to low wages and mindless drudgery, a member of staff may stare into the middle-distance and behold a plastic pot plant and be immediately snapped out of their suicidal machinations.

As such, you should place dozens of plastic plants around your workplace to ensure your employees remain alive as long as possible.

You could consider just giving everyone a £5k pay rise to help them deal with the modern cost of living crisis, but why bother doing that? It’d mean you’d have to take a pay cut.

Fake plants it is! They’re cheap and ensure you stay on a seven digit salary.

Where to Place Fake Plants at Work

It’s essential to place your plastic plants in a sensible place around your workplace. Here are some examples of dodgy places to position them:

• Inside workplace toilet bowels.
• On the dual carriageway adjacent to the office.
• In the kitchen fridge.
• All inside the CEO’s office, thus invoking jealously.
• Lining the corridors of your office environment.

Remember, as an employer you have a duty of care to your employees.

Their health and safety is important, because if you muck things up and they get injured you’ll lose money.

As such, ensure pot plants (fake or otherwise) aren’t blocking the corridors as employees may trip over them. This could result in injuries such as:

• Decapitation.
• Tennis elbow.
• Conjunctivitis.
• Scurvy.
• Stubbed toes at work.
• Scuffed kneecaps.

More sensible places to put your plants are as follows:

• On windowsills.
• On workstations.

That sort of stuff. You know, the common sense approach rather than on the verge of a stairwell, which could plunge an employee several flights headfirst into the floor below.

Managing Workplace Strikes Due to Fake Plants

If you have hippies and other leftists in your workplace, you may soon find protests and/or rioting due to your use of plastic plants.

This is due to the lingering belief that:

• Plastic is bad for the environment (it isn’t… well, okay, it is, but why bother acknowledging that when you’re living the capitalist dream?).
• Real plants would be more beneficial to your workplace.

When facing such turmoil, remember to remain calm. It may be tempting to belabour abuse at those precious snowflakes, but you need to try and reason with the lefties.

As such, sit them all down together in a room to explain your point of view.

1. Plastic plants are cheaper than real plants.
2. Plastic plants don’t need daily watering.
3. You’re doing real plants a favour as they’ll now be outside, rather than inside, which is their natural environment.
4. The employees shouldn’t be staring at the fake plants for this long anyway as they should be working! That’s what you pay them for!!

If there’s further tumult, you should then point out you’ll fire employees for further time wasting about plants.

Should your employees counter your statement with a claim it would be unfair dismissal, inform them you’ll shoot them dead with a bazooka if they don’t back down.

At this stage, the police may get involved and there’ll be questions as to how, why, and where you acquired a bazooka.

All this may mean you need to determine meticulous rules regarding your fake plants at work to ensure office productivity and employee harmony.

Establishing Your Fake Plants at Work Policy

Seeing as your plastic (and otherwise) plants are causing so much of a ruckus at work, you’ll need to create a policy outlining their use in your working environment.

You can include the policy in with your company handbook. It should determine:

• Stipulations on how long each member of staff can stare at fake/real plants during the working day. For example:
  • Senior employees will be allowed more time to gaze lovingly at the leafy mass of falseness/reality.
  • Junior employees will only be allowed mere seconds to glance at the likes of your £150 artificial ficus tree (on pain of hobbling with a sledgehammer).
• Punishment methods for anyone caught lingering around fake plants admiring their construction. You may wish to choose:
  • The aforementioned hobbling.
  • Garrotting.
  • Hanging, drawing, and quartering.
  • Guillotine.
  • 30 lashes with a whip.
  • A month of cheese on toast only as a lunch option.
• A company promise not to shoot anyone with a bazooka without a thoroughly justified reason.

Remember—your employees are feeble, dumb, and easily amused.

If fake plants aren’t enough, chuck a ping pong table into the mix to satisfy their inferior intelligence.

Again, ignore real perks such as liveable wages and pay rises. Who cares what your employees’ rents are!? If there’s a housing crisis, they should work harder! As a CEO, it’s better to stay hopelessly out of touch with reality!

And plastic pot plants will help take their mind off your stingy money hoarding approach to business life.