5 great ways to encourage more creative thinking in your workplace
In the creative sector, the ability to think outside the box can be an essential skill if you want to find the next big thing. But as you’ll know, it can be hard to capture creativity in a bottle.
Being able to innovate can help companies to stand out among their competitors, which is why it’s important to foster the right atmosphere in your business. If you want to know how to encourage more creative thinking in your workplace, read on for five useful tips.
1. Build a diverse team
The best ideas are often made when teams bounce ideas off each other, which is why it’s important to hire employees from a diverse set of backgrounds. By hiring staff who may have previously worked in different fields, or have varying levels of education, you can stimulate greater creativity.
When you take on new staff, you may choose starters based on how well they fit into your existing team. But while promoting harmony in the workplace is important, it can be easy to pick ones who are too similar to your workers and so may not be able to offer any new ideas.
At the end of the day, if your employees all have the same background then the ideas that they produce can start to sound repetitive after a while. That’s why, when you compare CVs, you might want to keep an eye out for the ones with different skills and education than you usually hire.
2. Don’t be afraid to take chances
Building a business can be a hugely rewarding job, but also takes many years of hard work to do. That’s why it can sometimes be tempting to play it safe. But actually, being too risk-averse can kill creativity at work.
Instead, it can be useful to be curious and try to approach problems with a beginner’s mindset. By asking questions and trying new strategies to address challenges, you can stimulate more creativity in your team.
3. Promote experimentation but also support failure
Leading on from the previous point, while taking chances is a hugely important part in creating a creative atmosphere, it’s only half the battle.
If you want to help your team to think outside the box, it’s also important to support your staff when their experiments don’t work out. Not every idea can be a success, but you’ll never know until you try.
By making sure that your team are aware that you’ll support them even if a new strategy doesn’t work out, it enables them to think creatively and try new methods to find ways to improve.
4. Don’t micromanage
If you want to promote creativity among your team, it’s important not to micromanage them. While your team can often benefit from your experience, letting them make their own decisions can help encourage them to try new ways of doings things.
When teams are excessively micromanaged, they can easily become stifled. After all, when you have no freedom on how you do a task, and so can’t innovate, it’s very hard to feel creative.
By giving your team more free rein, you can empower them to do their best work and find new solutions to existing problems.
5. Encourage lifelong learning
Very often, repetition and stagnation are the two biggest enemies of creativity. That’s why, if you want to encourage your staff to find new solutions to problems, it’s important to encourage them to be constantly learning and finding new ways to experiment.
For example, you may want to offer extra training for your employees. Not only will this give them greater stimulation and show them new ways of doing things but, as we mentioned in a previous article, investing in your workers can have a variety of other benefits.
For example, knowing that their employer cares about their wellbeing and skills can foster a greater sense of loyalty and job satisfaction. This can reduce the level of staff turnover in your business, minimising the risk of any disruptions to your workflow.
Alternatively, you may also want to send employees to conferences or L&D events, which can help them to find new ways of addressing challenges and solving problems.
Get in touch
While fostering creativity can help you to grow your business, finding the right type of cover can help you to protect it. If you want to know what types of protection could benefit your company, we can help.
Email creative@eggarforrester.com or use our contact form to request a callback from our team.
