The Hidden Value of Creativity in the Workplace
Today’s businesses face an increasingly competitive and challenging global landscape. Their success depends on working with the brightest and most creative minds to envision, develop, and market their product or service – but not all workplaces manage to create a business culture that fosters creativity.
Investing in Workplace Creativity
Those companies that do place a priority on engaging their workers’ creative sides stand out from the crowd. Apple and Google represent two of the top businesses who made fostering creativity a fundamental part of their brand philosophy. Apple designed individualized workplaces for different creative groups of employees. Comparatively, Google provides employees with the opportunity to work on personal projects up to 20% of their time.
However, they aren’t the only companies investing in workplace creativity.
Many other companies have instituted methodologies to feed employee creativity – often resulting in improved workplace performance.
Leading Models in Workplace Creativity
- Software company Atlassian created “FedEx Days,” later renamed to ShipIt. Each ShipIt consists of a paid, 24-hour window during which employees can work on anything they want, innovating with team members from all departments across the entire company.
- Gore-Tex sought to support experimental innovation by allowing employees to spend 10% of their time working on personal projects, and the remainder of their time working on company projects of their choosing – instead of simply handing out assignments.
- 3M’s unique “15% Culture” ensures its employees receive roughly five hours each week to work on personal projects and ideas. Thus, 3M nurtures excitement and helps employees maintain the motivation necessary to complete work during both portions of their workday.
Additionally, 80% of enterprise decision makers, who responded to a Forrester survey in 2014, stated that they believed in a strong connection between creativity and positive business results.
Creativity Breeds Productivity and Healthy Habits
Creativity is innate – we all possess the power to be creative. Moreover, we can constantly cultivate our own creatively active environment, even if we work in a business culture that doesn’t yet foster it. Below, we will share a few ideas to help you find the right balance that inspires creativity.
4 Ways to Actively Boost Your Workplace Creativity
Play more. Sports, teambuilding activities, brainteasers, and even video games can wake up your creative side, sparking new ideas.
Stay healthy. Implement a schedule that provides both physical activity and routine downtime, get enough sleep, and eat nutritiously. By boosting your health through nutrition and exercise, you feed your brain – the source of your creativity.
Schedule time to create. If your employer doesn’t provide you with time, consider cutting your lunch hour in half. Use that ‘extra’ 30 minutes to work on your own project or idea.
Use a vision board to add new ideas, work on those already conceived, and inspire yourself to carve out time every day to be creative.
Creativity can be the crucial ingredient to staying competitive in your business and your field. By working with a company that fosters your creativity, or finding ways to cultivate your own, you can increase your overall happiness and strengthen your workplace performance.
