Creativity is typically associated with artistic activities and rarely with ‘serious’ business. However, if you want your employees to be a team of ambitious, dedicated, productive players for your brand, you need every member to be at his or her creative peak.
After all, it’s creativity that allows for alternative solutions to tough, complex problems. It allows for new ideas to emerge and reshape your assumptions. It helps people improve their workflows and approaches, and most importantly, it inspires people, leading to a happier, more involved team. Hiring creative candidates may work, but your primary goal should be to create an environment that nourishes the creativity in everyone, and here’s how to do it:
Allow flexible work schedules
Studies have consistently shown that flexible schedules lead to higher rates of overall productivity and higher job satisfaction: by letting your employees “work outside the box”, you help them to “think outside the box”.
Encourage breaks
Building breaks into your work culture gives work less of a “grindstone” feel and more of an active choice.
Listen to new ideas
Cultivate an atmosphere of positive idea generation where employees feel comfortable to share their ideas and innovative suggestions.
Add sensory experiences to your workspace
Consider hanging thought-provoking abstract art on the walls, filling the office with new scents or playing unconventional music through your loudspeakers. Doing so will help employees think in new ways and become more stimulated by their environment.
Facilitate a team mentality
Creativity is a team sport, so you should make effort to help your team members work together, conduct team exercises and generally have opportunities to bond with each another. Doing so will help them trust each other, and work together to bring new ideas to life.
