Creative employees can help encourage your business to grow. Creativity promotes critical thinking and innovation within the workplace and for businesses, understanding how you can increase creativity within the workplace can contribute to higher productivity levels and improved employee morale and satisfaction.
There are numerous ways in which you can promote and inspire creativity within the workplace. It’s important to test out different ideas and strategies as all employees will respond differently and what works best for one employee may not work for another. Let’s take a look at some ways you can inspire creativity in the workplace and boost productivity and morale.
Clearly Communicate Business Goals
It’s important to encourage your employees with their own development and progress by sharing with them the goals you have for your business. This can help employees to understand more about your long term goals and helps them to plan their own development plans. You obviously don’t need to include the finer business details, but including some stats and data which showcases your improvements and increases can help to motivate. By building an open atmosphere, you can show your employees the value they have within the company and this can help them to reach both their short and long term goals.
Colour and Decor
Colours incorporated within an office space can have a huge impact on the energy and creativity of an office space. In general, employees don’t respond well to boring office colours, such as brown, white, grey and magnolia and they can dampen creativity and productivity. White walls make it hard for people to concentrate and for eyes to adjust when looking at screens. It’s important to give employees some colour within their workspace. Pastel blues and greens create environments that are easier for the eyes to concentrate and can make spaces feel more relaxed.
Indoor plants can create an enriched environment and increase feelings of productivity, happiness and creativity. In spaces where you want to stimulate and inspire creative thinking, use bold colours such as red and orange. A lot of businesses consider having an office fit out once their team expands and this is understandable if your workspace is quickly becoming dull and dated.
Create Time and Space For Activities
It’s important to schedule time for occasional fun activities within the workplace. Trying to encourage time away from work tasks for your team to bond and get to know each other is important to inspire creativity and encourage collaboration. This could be lunches out or post-work activities such as fun team sports or themed bar nights.
As well as activities outside of work, it’s important to introduce spaces within the workplace where employees can take time out to reset or take 10 minutes with coworkers to discuss projects without a screen in front of them. This could be shared communal spaces, or have a breakout space with coffee and drink machines where they can sit and chat.
Conclusion
It’s important that, as a business owner, you consider just how creative and inspiring your workplace is for your employees. You may wish to consider a complete refresh and redesign of the space, or take inspiration from hospitality fit outs which typically take into account flow and usability of a space to make it the best it can be.
