Using aroma in workplaces as an invisible mood enhancer – both for employee satisfaction and productivity – is on the rise, according to an excerpt from the 2019 Global Wellness Trends Report.
In the excerpt, titled ‘MediScent: Fragrance Gets a Wellness Makeover’, it states that a Japanese company found that while lavender and jasmine soothed employees, diffusing a lemon scent was able to increase their productivity by 54%.
The excerpt reads: “Rachel S. Herz, assistant professor of psychology at Brown University, writes that people who work in the presence of pleasant-smelling air set higher goals and are more likely to employ efficient work strategies. People are more creative in problem-solving when exposed to a pleasant scent compared to an unpleasant one.”
The Global Wellness Institute’s trends report predicts that while the neuroscience of scent, and scent’s impact on the human brain, memory and emotional wellbeing, are still in the early days, ‘scent design’ will become more ubiquitous in all kinds of public spaces and in ways we might never have dreamed of.
It forecasts that in future, we will see more powerfully immersive multisensory experiences (i.e. designed collages of visual, auditory, scent and touch experiences) in spas and travel destinations, among many other places.