Cultus
Have you ever pondered on the significance of developing a creative culture at workplace?
Well, many CEOs today consider it highly significant, because they believe innovation contributes to an organization’s growth and success, which can only be achieved if the culture in an organization is creative and smooth.
Few days back while I was reading through Internet, I came across an IBM’s survey. IBM basically asked 1500 CEOs from 33 industries of around 60 countries about significance of creative culture at workplace.
The survey revealed that they support creative culture and for them it is the most imperative and primary skill for leadership. Vision, integrity, management discipline and consistency are secondary skill sets, according to those 1500 CEOs.
Thus, you must have understood that leaders of an organization play a vital role in developing creative culture at workplace. But employees also play their part in fostering this culture at individual level.
Do you believe that creative culture is well-suited for big organizations or companies with high-budgets? Well, you are completely mistaken! Size of the company, its industry and its budget are not the major constituents that affect the creative output.
I am therefore, sharing the key factors or techniques that can help you to foster creative culture in your organization and encourage your employees to innovate:
- Create an inspirational workplace
You need to follow the design-centric approach and integrate innovation in your organization’s culture as a must-follow thing. This is essential to keep your pace with the changing demands of the corporate world.
But, your employees can never innovate and deliver creative outcome in an obsolete working environment within a small, congested workspace and under dim lights. You need to provide your employees and team members wide open spaces, as to foster a creative culture.
Big windows, cozy work spaces, bright lights and huge spaces contribute a lot to the comfort of your employees. If you are on a low budget, you can even do all this at minimum rates.
Vivid colored walls and wide spaces are also good enough.
You need to make sure that how you can help reveal the creative side of your employees by giving them an ideal workspace.
- Reward the creative process not just the end result
I have observed that many organizations reward employees on end results.
They never praise employees who have worked hard on deploying a creative process, but couldn’t succeed in delivering expected outcome.
If you want your team members or employers to consistently stay motivated and come up with out of the box solutions, then reward them. Always cheer their creative process, even if they don’t produce the required result.
This is how you can encourage and foster a creative culture at workplace.
- Build teams with diverse people and give them priority over your customers
You shall definitely not be able to get a perfect team, if you seek to employ your carbon copy in terms of skills, knowledge and mind-set.
An innovative and creative organization grows well with diverse team not with similar minded people.
Hire people from diverse backgrounds, holding different experiences and education. This diversity will strengthen your organization, resulting in great success.
Foster a creative culture by giving highest priority to your team members or employees. I know customers come first, but when you put your team first, it ultimately results in satisfied and happy customers.
- Create a stress free and positive working environment
Studies have proved that positive mood improves creativity.
Thus, you need to provide your employees a positive and stress free work environment, so that nothing hinders their creativity.
If your team members or employees are studying and stuck somewhere in their assignment, provide help with assignment. This will be a great initiative to minimize their stress.
Our positive mood makes us open-minded and lets us discover better options. So, providing a positive work environment will surely broaden up your employees’ perspectives and will encourage them to innovate.
You need to incorporate fun in work as well, so that they feel relaxed and come up with creative ideas and solutions.
I would suggest you to frequently organize recreational activities for your employees to better foster a creative culture.
Creativity today is a must thing that you have to incorporate within your work processes, encourage and develop within employees, because your competitors might be making efforts to become more creative than you and capture the market.
Author:
Kaelynn Bailee is an experienced academic consultant, who has been working in online firm supervising work quality. She loves to spend her time on her favorite activity, writing education blogs.
