Most of the employers will agree with the fact, that creativity and innovation hold crucial roles in helping companies advance, seek opportunities to be highly competitive and thrive during the economic downturns. Creativity is needed to grow the company and to carve a niche among the competition.

One way to encourage more creativity among employees at work is by creating a workplace that supports employee development with happy workforce, highly-motivated towards their job role.

See also: 5 Great Workplace Design Tips to Boost Employee Productivity

Creative employees provide many fresh ideas and terrific strategies that can be useful and valuable to boost the company’s overall performance.  Here are some of the simplest ways to make a creative workplace:

Build a cool and inspiring workspace. The very first thing, that contributes to employees’ happiness and boosts more creativity is a cool, terrific workspace.

An old-school workspace design with many cubicles and dull space lights are no longer advisable as they dampen morale and impact productivity.

Especially millennials prefer working in spaces that exude positivity and radiant energy with bright colours to perk up their moods and feel motivated to perform.

A large open space sans cubicles with comfortable seating arrangements and big windows, open up your mental horizons to seek for new ideas and prod on innovative concepts at work.

Employees then find mental room to maneuver and explore creativity by diving deep into thoughts. HR managers should always stay up- to-date with recent innovative concepts in workspace design to build most inspiring workspaces suitable for employees to learn, grow, bond and share.

Flexible working hours. Clocking in 9 to 5 working hours will soon become a thing of the past, as such rigid timings prove to be less effective to derive maximum productivity from today’s workforce.

Employees now prefer working flexible hours, and sometimes are also willing to work over weekends. Employers should in turn be flexible to adopt such new emerging working models, as they inspire creativity among workforce.

Some employees, such as web-developers and UI/UX designers can function at their optimum capacities during certain time periods of the day, like after work hours or  even at midnight, when there is no noise in the background and matters that need silent attention can be dealt with.

For some employees, working outside the boundaries of the regular working hours, allows them the freedom to work at their own will, while meeting deadlines and offers a room for creativity to grow.

HR managers and employers alike should work in tandem to apply the best working hours policy to meet employee demands, and make necessary alterations to the 9 to 5 working hour schedule such as to make creativity an integral part of the workplace culture.

Cool Perks. Happiness can significantly boost creative outcomes, and cool perks are some ways to make employees happy. Companies can adopt less-expensive perks such as providing coffee vending machines, ping pong tables, free snacks and recreation rooms are quite effective to create happy workspaces with happy employees, breathing creativity in their everyday work life.

Some more-expensive perks are also worth a try by employers such as regular vacation, free lunches, video games, health insurance and more.

Cool perks do not just create a great workplace but it also helps attract best  talent to the company.

Open, fearless communication

Creative workings of an organisation need to be supported with an open and fearless communication. Fear of leader’s bad temperamental reaction, bad assessments, and bad reputation can be quite threatening for an employee’s career. Furthermore, this can also hamper creativity and innovation in the workplace.

HR managers should act as great role models to nurture the culture of open communication at work, wherein employees are encouraged to express their viewpoints, opine, comment, provide suggestions and feedback without fear of losing their job or any life-changing impact on their careers.

The workforces of tomorrow demand workplaces to be creative fostering innovation and brimming with ideas at its core. This is crucial to attracting the best talent in the industry, retaining the best employees and winning a competitive edge in the fast-paced digital era.

While some strategies for developing creative workplaces can be expensive in nature, it is definitely worth an investment to create highly engaged and productive workforce.

Do write back with your creative success story to us.

Next read: How to Help Your Timid Employees Become More Confident at Work?