8 Creative Workspace Ideas to Boost Employee Creativity
Do you need creative workspace ideas? There are so many to choose from, but here are our top ones. Read now.
Where we work and how we work are just as important as why we work. And in a day and age where we’ve begun to transition away from the cubicle and conventional office space designs into a more flexible era, it’s time to embrace the importance of a creative workspace.
Being creative is about more than just satisfying our inner child during office hours. Creativity plays a vital role in keeping individuals interested in their work. If you develop an office environment where everyone shows up to clock in their daily hours, you may develop a team of diligent workers, but they will get bored.
By enabling (and not demanding!) creativity, you give them the chance to try things out, turn ideas into reality, and develop new ideas seen nowhere else. Innovation, homebred and true.
1. Give Your Employees a Change of Pace
One surefire way to get stuck in a rut is to come to work in the same three sq. ft. every morning. Give your employees new ways to work! Give them the option of sticking to their favorite desk for ten weeks or working from ten different spaces in the office over the course of a week.
Coworking spaces are often a great example of this style of office design. Because coworking spaces need to cater to individuals and teams alike, many of them are structured to offer a myriad of workspaces – from common areas where professionals can mingle and relax to joined workspaces where they sit together to collaborate or work separately, to focus rooms for individuals to be alone, to meeting rooms where teams can brainstorm and hold meetings without being overheard or overseen by others.
By dividing your office space into multiple regions of different interesting workspace possibilities, you give your team the option to change their approach to work daily, depending on what they need right now. Of course, there are logistic issues to approach here – if you have a big team and limited space, this isn’t an option for you. But smaller teams can share a large space and work from anywhere.
Alternatively, give your employees the opportunity to truly work from anywhere and choose where they want to work for the day, whether it’s at HQ, in a coworking space, at a café, in the park, or from the comfort of their own home. Digitalization helps many offices achieve the freedom to be truly mobile and remote, so take advantage of that ability by giving your employees the option to choose how and where they get their best work done.
2. Lots of Greenery
Low maintenance plants can breathe fresh life into your office without requiring you to staff a botanist to keep them going.
Various houseplants, succulents, and cacti are excellent tools for not just introducing some color into the office, but to begin reaping the mental benefits of having a touch of nature at work.
It’s not quite the same as sponsoring a company walk out into the woods every few weeks, but it does have a marked effect on individual anxieties and overall wellbeing. It seems hanging around lots of plants seems to do us a lot of good, especially in the way of mental health and creativity.
3. Natural Light is Best
No one wants to work in a windowless cell. Do not underestimate the importance and effect of natural light on the wellbeing of a coworker – and how that wellbeing can translate into better ideas, better execution, and a better work ethic.
While you are generally stuck with the natural lighting your leased office provides, there are ways you can restructure your floor plan to take better advantage of the light or give your employees the chance to work outdoors or from home on sunny days, tanking a little more sunlight between work sessions.
4. Encourage Blood Flow
We aren’t advocating for blood sport – instead, we’re asking you to incentivize employee movement, through company gym memberships, step counters, a healthy snack bar, and reminders to get up and stretch every hour or so.
A healthy employee is a creative employee, and taking a moment between tasks to go for a walk around the office or encourage regular exercise can help you improve your team’s lifestyle and overall satisfaction while reaping the rewards for your business.
5. Dope Your Team
No, we’re not talking about actual doping here. You can use legal advantages such as installing a coffee and tea bar at work, so your employees get an infinite stream of chai and cold brew into their system.
Simple, but effective. Caffeine is probably partially responsible for the industrial revolution, after all. And yes, that productivity can be channeled into creative endeavors as well.
6. Leverage Coworking Spaces for Creative Input
If you don’t have an office space of your own or are in the process of designing one, you could take cues from the way coworking spaces are built.
Different working areas, natural light, tasteful art, greenery, and other unique amenities can help you draw the most out of your team. Consider hopping between a few different coworking spots to find out what suits you best, or what you would improve. Take notes.
7. Reward Outside-the-Box Thinking
But don’t make it a baseline expectation. If everyone feels pressured to deliver “creative results” in order to make it in your company, you might encourage people to try and hack together something eccentric when the conventional approach is just as good.
8. Don’t Demand Creativity All the Time
Demanding creativity means forgetting what it means to be creative. Creativity is unlocked in an environment of choice and freedom. Give your employees a chance to breathe and come up with new ideas, and you’ll soon realize that the key to a more creative employee is to have a happier employee.
Putting the onus on every new hire to contribute creatively might put the wrong kind of pressure on onboarding talent. A team made of nothing but creatives and dreamers can also lead to unrealistic expectations and unrealized goals – you need a handful of realists to help temper the idealists, and keep your company on the right track.