Regardless of your industry, creativity needs to be an important part of what you do. Whether it’s marketing your business or designing new products or services, a creative workforce is crucial to accomplishing organizational goals.
It all starts with inspiring creativity at the office, but this doesn’t happen in an instant. Building a workplace that champions creativity requires the right approaches. Here’s a list to help you get started:
1. Set Specific Goals
Before anything else, it’s important to give employees a problem or issue that requires a creative solution. For this, you need to establish what your business needs to achieve.
Without setting a clear direction, you could be wasting your team’s creative potential. If you are starting a project or campaign, take time to identify specific business goals so everyone knows where to channel their creative energies.
2. Allow for Open Collaboration
Creativity is a shared experience. Each team member has a unique solution or proposal. Using everyone’s input helps you come up with an original idea or concept.
Make collaboration an essential part of team culture. You also need to allow open communication so that team members can brainstorm and discuss ideas that are worth trying.
An effective approach to this is to set up a freedom board. Whether it’s a blank wall or a whiteboard panel, your freedom board serves as a repository for ideas that employees can share and gain inspiration from. Have them jot or sketch their ideas on the board so everyone can discuss ideas as they go along.
3. Use the Right Tools to Your Advantage
New technology can help your organization achieve a more responsive and cohesive work environment. Using the right software in the right context enables employees to overcome creative roadblocks and keep the conversation going. Tools like Trello allow employees to share their insights in real-time.
MindMeister and other mind-mapping tools can also aid in idea generation and help employees develop concepts that branch out from an overall objective. If you are building another brand under your company, consider using a brand name generator
, graphic organizers, and prompts.
If there’s any software or hardware you think could help add creative fuel to your team, learn more about how you can maximize it.
4. Modify the Workplace
Oftentimes, it’s the office environment’s appearance that encourages (or impedes) creativity. If you have a workplace that’s dull and lifeless with cubicles that isolate employees from each other, consider a major overhaul.
Instead of monochrome paint colors, use splashes of green and blue to give employees visual stimulation. Apart from that, opt for a more relaxing and stimulating office design.
Swap your cubicles for bean bags, couches, standing desks, and shared workstations. You can also give the office space a homier vibe by adding a pantry area or a mini-cafe that can also serve as a workstation.
Lastly, you need to provide your employees with recreational amenities. The creative process is an exhausting one, so it’s important that you help your employees relax and find creative stimulation.
Consider including a game room complete with a video game console, a billiard table, or even vintage arcade games. Loosening up the work environment will empower your employees to explore new ideas in a way that doesn’t feel restrictive.
5. Avoid Micromanaging
Creativity remains a mysterious thing. It’s not possible to train yourself to become more creative nor is it possible to rush the creative process itself. If you are planning a major project or campaign, give everyone ample time to generate, test, and modify ideas.
Micromanaging employees won’t do anyone any good. The more pressure you place on your workforce, the more creative quality suffers. For this reason, give them ample time and space to tap into their creativity.
A good rule is to understand how much work should go towards a complicated task. For instance, if the work involves writing a technical ebook about your industry, consider the amount of time that goes into research, drafting, editing, and revising.
The project could take longer if the goal is to drive awareness and leads, so make sure to give your creative time extra time. You should also assure them of your support if they stumble into a creative roadblock.
6. Make the Most out of Team Huddles
The creative process involves having to share insights with people who are involved in the project. Apart from using the right collaboration tools, you should also consider organizing weekly huddles.
Unlike formal meetings, team huddles are more focused on building momentum, finding inspiration, and ensuring that everyone is still invested in the task.
While you can use team huddles as a way to assess progress and fix problems, you can also leverage them for addressing creative roadblocks. Even if it takes an hour or 30 minutes, a team huddle can be a perfect opportunity to solve creative issues.
7. Set a “Mindfulness hour”
Stress and anxiety are the enemies of innovation. If everyone at the office is under constant pressure, they may not be able to focus on coming up with original ideas.
For this reason, you need to make sure everyone can manage their stress levels well. A good way to get started on this is to give everyone at least an hour to disconnect from their desks and exercise mindfulness.
A “mindfulness hour” is crucial to letting off steam and preventing burnout. Make it part of everyone’s weekly habit to meditate or do anything that will help them relax.
To make the most of your weekly mindfulness hour, prepare a big enough space with greenery all around. It could be the rooftop or balcony area of your office facility. You should also make sure it’s well-insulated from noise. You can add relaxing music so everyone finds peace faster.
By giving your employees at least an hour to be mindful of their emotional and mental well-being, you can help them develop ideas that add value to your business.
8. Reward Innovation
Incentivizing your employees every time they provide a creative solution is not just an act of appreciating their hard work. It also serves as a gesture of showing how much you value their creative potential.
Being creative has the same level of importance as being able to work hard. Rewarding employees for this lets them know that they are vital to the organization.
You just need to be just as creative when it comes to rewarding your employees. Go beyond the typical team-building retreats and barbecues (unless you know how to organize these events well). Consider giving out coupons and gift cards.
On top of that, you can also give out monthly bonuses to raise morale and prevent burnout, especially among high-performing team members. Any gesture of appreciation is good, but it means a lot to give your employees concrete evidence of how much you value their creative efforts.
Fostering a creative work environment can work wonders in this day and age when being original is becoming increasingly difficult. The only way you can rise to the top is to show your employees the way using the ideas above.
