Boost employee creativity in three steps

Are your creatives running out of ideas?  Maybe it’s your office.

“Creativity and innovation come from human interactions and collaboration.  The lone genius that develops an idea doesn’t exist or perhaps didn’t really exist,” Steelcase director of design Michael Held said.

Not trusting your employees makes you think you need to control them, added Held.

“If you have employees that you trust, then there’s no need to worry about them being unproductive and wasting your money by just sitting somewhere because they don’t want to work,” he said.

2. Allow for self-expression that does not encourage occupying real estate

Entire desks filled with stuffed toys, figurines, collectibles and photographs are common in the Hong Kong workplace.

“If you are an agency in Asia and your employees are willing to move around instead of moving in, then they will get the benefit of working in different environments at different times,” Held said.

He says that if employees occupy certain spaces, such as their desks or work benches, it makes the same spaces unavailable to others.

Held said, “Many large companies in Asia are getting rid of cubicles and benches with personal stuff and going more towards a palette of places. You would have far fewer “residences”, meaning a fixed work desk where people are there every day for eight hours.  If you have to share your work desk, you can’t just litter it with personal stuff.”

Yet there needs to be spaces where people can express their identity through customization, such as a wall for sharing baby photos.

The need for self-expression is apparent in the way creatives like to dress casually.

“In creative agencies or companies with a high amount of innovation work, dressing casually has to do with people’s need to express their identity and to be authentic.  They need an outlet to be able to express their own ideas and values,” Held said.

“If you visit an agency, you will probably see cubicles decorated in the most crazy ways to inspire people.  They want to customise and personalise work spaces too.”

The idea is to strike a happy medium between personalising spaces shared and owned by the entire team without creating spaces that are exclusive to an individual.

This story first appeared on Marketing Interactive. To read the full article, click here.