Looking for new ways to improve your employees’ creativity at work? Want to achieve a supportive, open environment where even the shyest members of your workforce feel confident about contributing their ideas?
If so, you may be interested to hear that Fast Company recently shared the expert views of its Executive Board on this very subject. For a quick synopsis of its tips on how to jolt your workforce into creative mode and gather some great new ideas, please read below.
- Host a brainstorming session. Feel free to share the topic with participants beforehand to give them the thinking time necessary for their ideas to take shape. If everyone writes down their ideas, this has the added benefit of giving even the shyest employees the confidence to voice their idea(s).
- Fear of failure or judgment may stop some people from sharing their creative ideas. To avoid this, teams need to be educated on how to brainstorm effectively, select the best ideas, and progress from concept through to planning and rollout.
- Celebrate both successful and unsuccessful ideas. Invite staff to pitch for an innovation fund. When an idea flies, give the person who proposed it public recognition. When it goes south, applaud the innovation anyway and promptly test the next idea. Be clear with staff that you value creativity highly, regardless of whether ideas ultimately translate to new practices and projects or not.
- Encourage team members to do something unusual together – e.g., take a stroll or play a virtual game of cards together – and see what happens!
- Ask your team to sketch together and see what new ideas are born. Some people’s creativity levels increase dramatically when they have the opportunity to doodle around concepts (vs. writing about them).
- Foster collaboration across different departments and levels of seniority.
- Support employees’ side hustles! Whether directly relevant to their work or not, empower staff to complete online courses on topics they’re interested in. Ask them to present key takeouts to the rest of the team and behold the creativity levels team-wide soar!
We hope that the above tips are helpful, and wish you all the best with your activities and initiatives in this matter. If your current challenges are of a more recruitment-based flavour, please get in touch. ABL Recruitment is a multilingual recruitment agency with 30+ years of experience in the industry and a vast pool of top talent on our books, we will fast-track your search for best-fit candidates. Please get in touch at info@ablrecruitment.com or on 020 7092 3911 to brainstorm the options today!
