Inspire Creativity in Your Employees with These 5 Tips

Due to the rapid advancement of technology, finding a competitive edge inside of your business has become more important than ever. The demand for creative employees is becoming crucial for your business to survive. Some people are naturally creative, but as a general rule, the corporate world isn’t filled with naturally creative employees. 

Luckily, if you find your team is lacking creativity, you can teach them how to become more creative and innovative. All it takes is creating a powerful set of conditions that allow your workers to generate inspirational and ground-breaking solutions. Here are a 5 simple but effective tips that will help your team adopt creativity inside of your business. 

Entice Creative Thinking

Traditionally, creativity inside of your business isn’t as big of an issue as you’d imagine. However, a lack of opportunities for your team to express innovations and new ideas can create a crippling effect across a great team.

Some great ideas can be sparked inside of brainstorming sessions, but these new ideas rarely pop out polished. Allow your employees to discuss and tinker with an idea until they feel comfortable with presenting new innovations with the team. 

By creating an open-door policy for your team throughout specific times of the week, you’ll encourage opportunities for all of your employees to share their ideas without any fear of being judged or rejected during group discussions.

Consistently remind your team about how excited you are for your open-door hours at the conclusion of brainstorming sessions and creativity blocks. When an employee walks through your doors, always show them that you appreciate their ideas and that you’re not judging their suggestions. 

Support Individuality 

Your collective team is made up of individuals that have unique skill sets and approaches to problem solving. Through setting up brainstorming meetings, you’ll spark a little bit of creativity. However, you’ll be ignoring certain individuals who don’t work well as they’re presented a new topic under the “spotlight”. 

In order to spark more innovation with your team, give every individual time to find inspiration inside of their weekly routine. Having a consistent daily routine can kill creativity and inspiration, so make sure you encourage every employee to spend time finding inspiration while at work. 

This can be done by allowing your team members to take some time out of their daily schedule and dedicate it to creative thinking. Provide them with a distraction-free environment where they can come up with creative solutions for the company’s projects. 

You can even implement a suggestion box that guarantees your shiest employees can remain anonymous to the rest of the team. You’ll find that some individuals are incredibly shy, but they have wonderful ideas that can take projects to the next level. 

Reduce Stress

Overwhelming and stressful work environments can kill creativity. Deadlines are crucial inside of your projects, but too much pressure will kill your team’s ability to generate innovations inside of projects. 

You can reduce stress through encouraging your team to take small breaks throughout the work day. This will increase productivity while increasing job satisfaction. Another way to reduce stress inside of your team is to find ways for your team to have fun throughout the week. 

Google, Facebook, LEGO, and Zynga are just a few examples of companies that have an amazing company culture. You may not have the ability to install adult playgrounds, soccer fields, and create giant whiteboard rooms, but you can still find fun ways to decompress your team’s mind throughout the week.

A great way to spark creativity is to ask your team what they would enjoy doing for fun at work. You can try team games, break rooms, and fun side projects. A chance for your team to spark creativity outside of the work schedule can enhance productivity, creative thinking and problem solving. 

Create a Stimulating Environment

A healthy environment goes a long way when it comes to sparking creativity. A great office fosters a better workflow and innovation. Make sure your team has an opportunity to meet up with each other workers casually. You can create lounges or even cafes for employees to meet up and bounce ideas off of each other. 

Make sure you offer a number of locations that are tuned to both introverts and extroverts. Experiment with lighting, noise levels, comfort and decorations across the different types of break lounges to make every employee feel at home. 

It’s also crucial to understand that some employees feel more comfortable when they work from home. They thrive in an environment where they can separate themselves from distractions and focus on their job. While you may initially feel hesitant with this idea, you should know that remote workers are 13.5 percent more productive than their in-office counterparts. This can lead to an increase in creativity as well.

Foster Diversity

If you try to force everyone to think in a similar fashion, you’ll starve your team of creativity and destroy your team’s production over the long run. A team that is built with diversity in mind has a better chance to consistently generate groundbreaking ideas due to a variety of perspectives and approaches to projects.

To spark creativity among your employees, support diversity and encourage your team members to interact with colleagues that have various backgrounds and can bring different ideas and perspectives to the table. Try setting up an online whiteboard or even an internal site that’s designed for your entire staff to tap into the diverse company culture. 


Final Thoughts

While it’s important to keep your team focused, creativity is known to boost productivity and job satisfaction. By giving your team time to brainstorm individually and through keeping an open-door policy, you’ll spark innovation. Through ensuring your team has the ability to decompress and kill stress throughout the work week, you’ll keep your team fresh and innovative. The end result is a diverse team that will give your team and your business a competitive edge over your competition.

About The Author

Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and a striving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in the business world.