Are you giving your employees the opportunity to explore their creativity?
While research shows 85 percent of Americans believe creativity is a key driver of economic growth, just one in four people feel they currently live up to their creative potential. People clearly want to be more creative and see it as a critical benefit to success, and businesses failing to act on this could be missing out.
Companies encouraging a culture of creativity allow for more expression of ideas and thoughts from employees, rather than simply treating them as drones. This can lead to better teamwork, enhanced collaboration, more job satisfaction and increased productivity.
With that in mind, what can you do to inspire creativity in your workplace?
Embrace Individuality and Self-Expression
Your business is made up of people. While we share many similarities, we’re also individuals.
We have our own way of doing things, our own communication styles and our own talents. Businesses can encourage a more creative culture by allowing employees to be themselves, rather than insisting they adhere to uniform expectations.
For example, let workers wear the casual clothing they feel comfortable in rather than imposing a smart dress code (though exceptions may be made when meeting clients, of course).
Encourage your workers to be more open with clients and colleagues, provided the language remains appropriate. This helps to show your business’s human side and makes your brand more approachable.
Create a Workplace Design That Promotes Creative Thought
Your office is more than just four walls and a floor. This is the place in which your skilled employees do the work and produce the ideas that help your business flourish — so treat it as such.
Breakout areas, couches, communal work spaces, vibrant color schemes and background music all help to make the workplace feel more conducive to creative thinking. Having access to table football, beanbags, video games, magazines, gadgets and more allows people to take their mind off the job at hand and utilize other areas of their brain.
They will return to their work refreshed and energized, able to approach problems with a revitalized mind.
Cultivate Collaboration and Idea-Sharing
Everyone in your company has their own history, their own experiences, their own education and their own values. Everyone has valuable contributions to make to your business — but they may struggle to unlock their most powerful ideas by working alone.
Encouraging team and cross-departmental collaboration helps bring different viewpoints together, enabling employees to take inspiration from each other. Collaboration should be accommodated online and in person.
For example, using idea management software dedicated to idea-sharing — such as Idea Drop — is a simple option. Just by downloading an app, workers have the freedom and flexibility to make suggestions at any time. Everyone in the company, from newcomers to managers and the CEO, has a level playing-field on which to explore exciting possibilities.
This platform lets users share ideas without revealing their identity too, which leads on to our next point.
Allow for Anonymous Contributions
Not everyone feels comfortable speaking up in a crowd or putting their ideas out for others to hear. The workplace can be intimidating for shy people, or those who have been based in hostile business environments in the past.
It’s a shame, because employees lacking in the confidence to share could be keeping valuable ideas to themselves.
Make it easier for everyone to be creative by allowing for anonymous contributions. Set up a suggestion box in a quiet area of the office and invite anyone to submit ideas at any time.
If it’s an idea that doesn’t necessarily have legs, the individual who put it forward has no need to feel embarrassed — the concept simply won’t come to fruition, and nobody else will know.
Lead by Example
As a manager, you have an influential position in your business. You want your employees to view you as an inspirational figure they want to share ideas with, not someone who expects them to sit at their desk all day and work without engaging their brain.
One of the best ways to inspire creativity is to embrace it yourself. Present your own ideas for improving productivity, satisfying more clients, changing the office or anything else and welcome feedback. Your workers might be used to you just making decisions without considering anyone else’s opinion, but you can change that by being more open.
Make it clear that you value your workforce’s views and motivate them to share with each other. Breaking down communication barriers and recognizing that everyone has something worthwhile to say can make a significant difference.
These are just five ways to encourage creativity in your business in simple ways, but you might have ideas of your own. What have you done to foster a more creative workplace, and what results have you seen? Share your thoughts below.
