Work can become monotonous. There comes a time in every entrepreneur’s life when he starts seeing a drop in productivity, lack of enthusiasm, and the slowing down of progress. This happens when your team starts to lose their motivation and their creativity. Naturally, you need to do something to bring life back into your company and inspire creativity.
If you’ve chosen a team of dynamic, highly productive employees, you need to make sure that they’re always inspired to come up with new ideas and solutions. Here are some ways you can keep the creative juices flowing.
Break the Routine
Monotony is an enemy of creativity. In fact, companies with some of the most brilliant minds in the world like Google and Apple actively encourage their employees’ creativity by frequently breaking monotony. You should shake things up every once in a while. You can do that with simple, easily applied methods.
For example, why not have special days once a month where every employee comes in dressed as a pirate? That would not only break the monotony, but also create a fun, humor-filled environment at work. This would keep the creative juices flowing and also give employees something to look forward to. Breaking the routine doesn’t need to be complex or expensive, it just needs to be something that would stimulate the minds of your team.
Encourage Growth and Learning
We have an infinite capacity to learn so why stop when we step out of college? As a small business owner and a boss, you should encourage your team to learn new things. The new skill might not be relevant to the job. For example, you can encourage your Web design team to try to learn skiing.
There are several entrepreneurs that set up funds to encourage growth and learning in their employees. Learning new things stimulates the mind and that can lead to increase in creativity. After all, the brain isn’t falling into habits and losing its ability to solve problems.
Vacations
Nothing inspires creativity as well as traveling. This is especially true if you travel out of the country and explore new cultures and places. Employers should encourage their employees to take a break and visit different parts of the world. When the team members return, their mind is refreshed and they’re bursting with ideas.
Travel has the tendency to insure a surge of creativity. There are several great thinkers in the past and present that have done their best work after experiencing a different place and getting away from familiar surroundings.
Create an Environment
You can create a workplace environment that would promote creativity. There are several ways to do it. Most start-ups, for example, aim for a relaxed and airy atmosphere. They use colors, music, and other such tools to keep the environment open and cheery. There are several studies that show that people working in well-lit, cheerful environments are more productive and creative than those working in constrained and stifling cubicle environments.
As you can see, there’s no shortage of ways through which you can encourage creativity. You just need to be creative about it.
