Five Tips for Managers on Promoting Creativity with Your Employees
Creativity is an integral part of the workplace, be it in business, government, or nonprofit organizations. Creativity ensures organizations stay cutting edge and relevant as new needs arise for the business and their clients or customers. This became especially true during the pandemic, as organizations worked to keep their doors open and operations running safely and smoothly through this period of unprecedented change. As such, many organizations are doing their best to grow and capitalize on their employees’ creative potential. However, it can be difficult to know how to foster creativity amongst employees. Below are some tips for managers on facilitating creativity in your teams.
Ensuring employees have the proper resources, autonomy, and support will allow your employees to tap into their creative side.
Encourage challenging work. Give your employees tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult, but require the employee to put effort and thought into their work. If a task is too easy, there is no need for creative ideas. On the other hand, tasks that are too difficult often demotivate and discourage employees, leaving little room for creativity to flourish. Tasks that provide a challenge and have a bit of ambiguity require employees to think creatively in order for the task to be completed.
Provide sufficient resources for your employees. This may include ensuring your employees have proper access to facilities and information in the workplace that will allow them to tackle problems that require creative solutions. With many organizations transitioning to a more virtual work environment, the focus here may shift to providing your employees with the proper materials and resources to work from home. Employees that do not have a well-equipped work-from-home environment may focus their own effort on providing necessary resources for themselves, rather than focusing their effort on developing creative ideas. Resources can also include the time allotted to engage in creative thought. It can take time to explore and develop creative ideas, so ensuring your employees have enough time to do so can be beneficial.
Give your employees autonomy. When possible, give your employees the autonomy to make decisions regarding how to do their tasks. Allowing your employees to have freedom to decide how to perform their assigned tasks gives them the opportunity to stretch their creative muscles and approach problems from different angles and points of view.
Provide supervisor support. Although employees’ creativity benefits from autonomy, it is important to ensure that your employees are still supported and that their ideas are acknowledged. Make sure that supervisors encourage their employees and recognize employees’ creative ideas and efforts. Being open to new ideas and differing opinions, and providing flexibility, goes a long way in encouraging creativity in employees. Employees will be more likely to present their creative ideas knowing that they have a supervisor that will listen and consider them.
Make sure your employees know the organization values creativity. More than just providing managerial support, it is important to make sure your organization as a whole supports creativity. This may include making sure your organization’s mission statement or guiding principles highlight creativity as being important. Organizations may also want to provide employees with some sort of recognition for creative work. Creative ideas are more likely to flow in an organization that clearly values creativity.
These are just a few ways to help promote creativity in the workplace. Ensuring employees have the proper resources, autonomy, and support will allow your employees to tap into their creative side. This, in turn, will allow your organization to harness that creative potential and continue on a path of growth. It is worth noting that an organization that seeks to maximize creativity may also be an organization that may have to take additional risks. Don’t let this discourage you, it is often said that with risk comes great reward! If you would like additional support on fostering creativity in your employees, feel free to reach out!