Creativity in the workplace can lead to better problem-solving, enhanced productivity, and improved staff morale. However, when it comes to promoting a creative work environment, you need to get your employees’ creative juices flowing. This is because many individuals get stuck in routines, not allowing their minds to think out of the box. So, how do you unlock creativity in the workplace?
For starters, you need to acknowledge that lack of creativity in the workplace is something you can address. Consider this – writers tend to suffer from writer’s block and artists might struggle with blank canvasses. However, they typically move past such moments and get back to what they do best.
Regardless of what you do for a living, you might have had a moment when ideas just wouldn’t come. Your mind buzzed, not with solutions, but useless white noise. Now imagine this in a workplace with multiple employees, with most feeling the same way. In a world that runs on innovation and creativity, that can leave a big dent in your bottom line. Fortunately, once you understand how to boost creativity at work, you may watch the benefits unfold.
Table Of Contents
Prioritize Creativity
Businesses need to start looking at creativity as an asset that can help them identify and seize opportunities. A study carried out by Gallup shed light on the three factors that help promote creativity in the workplace, highlighting that they remain hard to find. These include:
- An expectation that employees will be creative
- The time factor
- The freedom to take risks
For starters, you need to let your employees know that you expect them to be creative, no matter what role they play, as this helps foster out-of-the-box thinking. Then, make sure they get the time they need to come up with creative solutions, even if it means reworking processes to make room for deep work and brainstorming. This will prevent them from taking the path of least resistance and allow them to come up with innovative ideas.
Keep an Open Environment
An important aspect in how to improve creativity at work is to create an environment where employees feel they have the room and freedom to express their ideas and concerns freely. One easy way to do this is to create a platform or forum that encourages employees to propose their ideas, no matter how bold or intangible they might seem.
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Remain open to suggestions and feedback from your employees. Consider providing an anonymous outlet for employees who are not at ease sharing their thoughts openly. You also need to demonstrate complete transparency surrounding why previous ideas found or did not find success, as this helps demonstrate openness on your part. In addition, it helps eliminate the fear of mistakes and promotes creativity.
Spruce It Up
How a workplace looks and feels can have a considerable impact on employees’ morale, productivity, and creativity. After all, there’s little chance of people being at their creative best in a dingy or boring office space. If you’re wondering how to encourage creativity, you need to stimulate the senses of your employees by providing a well-lit, aesthetically pleasing, vibrant, and functional workplace.
Depending on the type of business you run, sprucing up your workspace might require ensuring that it has up-to-date equipment so your employees may benefit from the latest technologies. If your employees need room for quiet thinking, you may consider getting a dedicated soundproof space.
Making your workplace more appealing does not require spending a fortune. For example, you may reach out to local artists to give your interior walls a makeover by using bright colors and fun motifs, place plants at strategic places, or invest in interesting yet ergonomic second-hand office furniture. Since the aim of the exercise is to create a workplace that your employees find stimulating, including them in the process and asking them for suggestions is ideal.
Keep It Organized
Clutter can be distracting. On the other hand, structure can help minimize the mental clutter that often prevents people from thinking creatively. While some might feel that being organized inhibits creativity, know that this is far from the truth. This is because when you eliminate clutter, you create space for fostering creativity. It comes as no surprise, then, that a clean and organized workplace helps employees focus better and come up with new ideas.
Eliminate Doubt
The best way to conduct a brainstorming session is to instill confidence in its attendees. If you fail at this, the things that seemingly stand in your way might bog you down. After all, it’s hard to reach for the stars if you’re preoccupied with the “can’t dos” and “won’t dos.” Instead, you need to substitute doubt with positivity, the result of which is you get to see your employees at their creative best, and ideas become limitless.
Encourage Creative Risk-Taking
The work environment you create should encourage and reward creative risk-taking. Remember that employees tend to refrain from taking creative approaches or proposing out-of-the-box solutions because of a fear of not finding the support they seek, and in some cases, even reprisal. As a result, you might benefit by reiterating time and again that your business understands the importance of creativity by being open to new ideas and rewarding creative risk-takers who have succeeded in creating positive impacts.
Make Room for Failure
Your employees should know that you are not after polished ideas or perfection when you ask them for their creative input. This requires giving them the freedom to devise plans that might not work and take risks without the fear of repercussions. What’s important is that you and they learn from mistakes, because knowing why you fail can help you come up with better solutions in the future. Without a tolerance for ambiguity, there is little chance that you’ll be able to increase creativity in a workplace.
Reward Innovation
An easy answer to, “How to encourage innovation and creativity in the workplace?” is to recognize and reward employees who think experimentally, not only when they create a positive impact, but also when they fail to produce results along expected lines. Highlight original suggestions and ideas in meetings, and discuss new ideas from employees during their reviews. Celebrate the success of any project with the team, and ensure naming the employees who are part of the process.
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Bear in mind that you may expect creativity only if you create an atmosphere that encourages your employees to get their imagination going. When you spot innovation, reward it in some form or the other, be it a bonus, a ticket to an event, or a swanky dinner.
Get Out of the Tetris Mode
It is common for most teams to play Calendar Tetris with their schedules. This is where every meeting block in your calendar interrupts your day’s natural flow, and you get little time to do productive work. This is also when employees are trying to fit every possible meeting into their scheme of things, and when required to innovate, find themselves against the wall, often complaining of a lack of time.
No matter which industry you belong to, there’s a good chance that it will face some kind of a roadblock in the near or no-too-distant future. Addressing any significant problem typically requires arriving at multiple possible solutions, analyzing the efficacy of each, and determining which might work best. This takes time. As a result, get your employees to block time in their calendars to address unforeseen challenges so as not to overburden them at any point in time.
If you don’t block time in advance, you cannot expect your team to offer innovative solutions during or soon after a crisis. If you want creativity and innovativeness to thrive, it’s important to make time for the core activities that you think will come into play as and when you face a challenge.
Promote Knowledge Sharing
It is common for businesses to have diverse teams with wide-ranging knowledge, experience, and expertise. However, not many promote knowledge sharing. As a business owner or manager, you should encourage employees to share their knowledge and expertise with others. You may facilitate this by encouraging informal knowledge sharing, getting employees to conduct workshops, hosting lunch and learns, offering mentorships, using online knowledge management tools, and running formal training programs.
Knowledge sharing can work well when it comes to discovering new interests that your employees can master and then apply in their existing roles. Once you provide platforms that encourage the sharing of knowledge, your employees stand to benefit in different ways. These include enhanced creativity and confidence as well as better thought leadership. Besides, while you cannot expect everyone to become an expert in every other realm, the process can be engaging, inspiring, and fun.
Encourage Exercising
A sedentary lifestyle and creativity rarely go together. When you find yourself stumped by a problem, consider doing an activity that gets your blood pumping. Findings from a research published on the Harvard Business Review website indicate that moderate-intensity physical activity helps improve not just health, but creativity and task performance as well.
Derek Robinson from Top Notch Dezigns once told Inc., “A few months ago, when I was in a brainstorming session with our web design team, I could not think beyond my initial idea. A two-mile midday run had everyone around me surprised, but once I was back, I was raring to go.” If you’re not the running type, you can probably get away with a few jumping jacks or any other form of exercise. This holds true for your employees as well.
Creativity in Web Design Agencies
Creativity serves as the backbone of web design agencies. After all, creating a website with a distinct personality requires breaking traditional norms and embracing innovation. When it comes to web design, creativity does not limit to coming up with new ideas that solve problems, but also extends to communicating effectively and meeting the needs of users. In this sense, creativity moves beyond aesthetics and pays dues attention to usability, accessibility, and overall functionality.
The top web designers are creative, to say the least, given that they have to use different elements like layouts, colors, images, videos, animation, buttons, and typography to deliver immersing and engaging user experiences. They also keep up with changing tools, trends, and technologies, and keep looking for new ways to meet and exceed evolving user expectations.
The Importance of Creativity in Web Design
Web design agencies thrive on creativity because it helps them present their clients in the best possible light. This can help you build a unique identity, stand out from the competition, increase your online visibility, attract more potential customers, and improve brand recall.
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Given that scores of websites are probably vying for the attention of the same audience, it is imperative that your website catches the eye, provides seamless navigation, engages its users, delivers value, and drives them down the conversion funnel. Achieving this requires adopting a creative approach.
Creativity in UX Design
It is common for people to think that user experience (UX) design is all about wireframes and testing. However not many realize that creativity is just as crucial as the core practices. This is because while UX design focuses on making websites functional and user-friendly, it’s also about creating experiences that are engaging, intuitive, and delightful, and this is where creativity comes into play. It allows UX web designers to:
- Solve problems in innovative ways
- Craft intuitive interactions
- Build emotional connections
Conclusion
In this day and age, businesses from almost every sector rely heavily on innovation and creativity. Sure, people go to work every day, but they often need to push the envelope to stay relevant. This requires a lot of fresh ideas and more than a couple of trips outside the box. If you find yourself at the wrong end of the creativity tunnel, consider going for a run, taking a swim, or pumping some iron. When it comes to increasing creativity in the workplace, set the right example and encourage your employees to follow your lead.
If you’re facing a creative roadblock in determining what you need from a new website or how to go about revamping an existing one, seeking advice from a creative digital agency might work well for you. Then, you may continue to focus on your core business.