There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.”
— Edward de Bono
Employee creativity and innovation are crucial for the success of any business. Creative employees bring new ideas, develop new technologies and foster growth of your company. The success of your company depends upon how you’re managing your employees for maximum creativity. And Companies that crack out a way to manage Employees creativity will always have a crucial advantage in the growing competition for talent.
1) Promote Collaboration:
Always promote collaboration in the company so that employees from different departments can work together to develop creative solutions for problems. Recognize, promote and reward employees who share knowledge, and work across departments. Collaboration is always better than selfish competition. Foster culture where employees believe in working together to build better products.
2) Organize Brainstorming Sessions or Events Like Hackathon:
Most of the big tech firms like Facebook or Twitter regularly hold events like Hackathon to foster the culture of innovation in the company. Hackathon is a sort of group brainstorming activity where engineers across the company come together to hack on new ideas and develop prototype overnight. Facebook has held 31 Hackathons since 2006 and most of its cool features such as “Like Button”, Chat or Timeline are result of Hackathon Events.
You can even invite outside programmers for these kind of brainstorming sessions and you might get more new ideas or new talent for your company.
3) Eliminate the barriers between Employees and Upper Management
Always try to include employees in the big decisions of the company. Take their feedback before final decisions are made so that they feel themselves to an important part of the organization. Even if you’re not using their ideas but this will promote collaboration in the company. Apart from that, employees should also be able to freely discuss new ideas with their senior managers.
4) Allocate resources (Time & Money) for experimentation:
Allocate resources such as Money and Time in your budget and calendar to experiment with new ideas and products. And Don’t be afraid to fail.
“The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”
— Edwin H. Land
5) Assures Job Security:
Innovation and Creativity always involve risks. And if an employee is constantly worried about losing his job, it is very hard for anyone to crack new ideas for the company. So, make your employees feel comfortable about their job even if some of their ideas fail.
6) Rewards:
Reward employees with financial benefits and promotions for their successful ideas. There is no better motivation than these monetary and non-monetary benefits.
Author Bio: Amit Chahar is a technologist at heart who is fascinated by the web in general. He is the founder of Youngblah.com, a blog about all things to do with Social Media , Technology and web culture.
