Ways to Increase Creativity at Work

Encouraging and increasing creativity at work can help grow your business and set its products and services apart from the competition. After all, fostering creativity can result in better solutions for your problems, more sales opportunities, and being able to retain and attract talent. In creating successful coworking solutions, Versa has looked into ways to help its members increase creativity at work. 

Six Ways to Increase Creativity at Work

1. Encourage brainstorming

Installing a big whiteboard and having many markers handy can be a great way of encouraging employees to explore any idea they might have, whenever inspiration comes to them. The size of the whiteboard is important because you want people to feel like they have ample space to write, draw, or doodle, while at the same time being able to accommodate more than one participant at a time. 

2. Embrace individuality

Employees often tend to blend in with the rest of the group, try hard not to stand out, and keep up with the norm because it somehow feels safer for them this way. One way to increase creativity at work is to celebrate each person’s individuality and show them that you value them for who they are. This will help employees come out of their shells, and feel encouraged to share their unusual ideas and insights that they would otherwise keep to themselves. 

3. Set the right mood

Setting the right atmosphere is crucial to encouraging creativity. Elements such as sound, colors, temperature, and lighting should be used to foster a creative environment. 

4. Accept suggestions

By installing suggestion boxes around the office you can definitely motivate people to share their ideas with you. But if you find that employees are too self-conscious to put their ideas in a suggestion box, then you might want to try an anonymous alternative such as an online form. 

5. Implement good ideas

It doesn’t matter how many ways of sharing ideas you provide for your employees if you don’t act on any of their advice. So make sure to act on any good ideas that are actually feasible. 

6. Hire the right people

If you want to have a creative workforce then make sure to actually hire creative people. It is a great idea to revisit your hiring process and make it a priority to evaluate a new candidate’s creativity before taking someone new on your team.