Placing an emphasis on creativity within the workforce is one of the smartest things that you can do in any economic circumstance. Creativity leads to innovation, and innovation often leads to increased performance, morale and dynamism. These elements are always essential to a successful business, but they are of even greater value at times of economic uncertainty. Below are some tips on how to encourage your colleagues to make more positive creative decisions and inspired judgements.

Keep an open mind
To enable truly creative solutions, you must first ensure that your team has a collectively open mind to the possibilities that lay out there. All too often, teams can get trapped within current company mentalities, outlooks and culture, and this can impede innovative ideas from surfacing. Try and create a situation whereby existing thinking is placed on hold, by using a few games (word association is a popular choice) to free people’s minds up from their normal thinking patterns at the beginning of the session.

Create a creative space
Conventional offices are not natural places to inspire creativity, by virtue of the somewhat compartmentalised workspace and formal settings that they can provide. It can therefore be helpful to develop an environment – either within the entire office or within a segment of it that is conducive to free thinking. In this way, you can psychologically remove your colleagues from their existing roles and get them to concentrate on less rigid, more creative solutions to your company’s commercial challenges.

Structural thinking
Creativity very seldom exists without some restrictive parameters being placed upon it first. Put another way, a tight and focused brief actually allows people to be more creative, as they have a structure to operate within. This tends to create solutions in a far more effective manner than by keeping the objectives more generalised and broad. To truly think ‘outside the box’ you must first be clear as to where the boundaries of the box lie.

Anything is possible
Creativity is the ability to approach any subject matter with fresh perspectives and create revolutionary ideas within it that did not exist before. At the beginning of your session, try to allow as many different voices within the team to be heard and do not dismiss any idea at this stage, no matter how ludicrous it may sound.

Group creativity is based on trust, and people will need to be encouraged to let their minds roam around the creative challenge if genuine progress is to be made. There will be time to rationalise later, but always start from the basis that anything is indeed possible. You may be surprised at where the good ideas come from.

Tie into your business goals
Being creative is a great attribute for any employee or team to possess, although it is fundamental that you direct the creative energies and ideas within the session towards real business goals. There is no point in nurturing creativity within your workplace unless it has the chance to flex its muscle on legitimate business objectives, and the ability to put ideas into tangible commercial action is the sign of a dynamic company.

Don’t neglect the detail
As a general rule of thumb, people who tend to be effective on the creative side tend also to be less effective on the details that support the ‘big idea’. Whilst you are developing the creativity within your team, it is also important to build an attention to reality and detail within the procedure. A great idea is nothing if it cannot practically be put into action, and the mechanics of the concept are every bit as important as the overall idea itself. A good mix of individual skills and process should allow the transition from concept to reality to be smooth.

Unify the team
The creative process is, by definition, a positive and constructive act, and the establishment of an effective creative process within your company can lead to many benefits, both internally and externally. Creative thinking may well add significantly to your company’s bottom line, although it can be just as valuable a process in uniting and focusing a team towards business objectives that they had a part in creating. Mixing up people from different departments can also help the process, and allow your teams to integrate with each other in a way that may not have been possible before.

Once a recession of any sort impacts, it is often employee numbers and morale that can suffer. Conversely, your professionals are arguably your most precious resource during any commercial environment, and this is particularly true within economic downturns. It will be your employees that are best poised to assist the business in recovering, maintaining and expanding turnover through the cycle. So how do you make the most of your employees during this period and make HR part of the solution to your company’s response? Below are some steps to ensure that your people are protected and continue to perform during the downturn.

Realistic assessments
Before you make any major decisions regarding your workforce, it is crucial that you conduct a realistic appraisal of the current position of your business and its employees. Different industries and business models will be affected in different ways, so any progressive strategy needs to be firmly rooted in the realities of the situation. It can also be helpful to include any direct competitors within this assessment, as their situation can be viewed relative to your own, and may offer some insights into the next steps that your company takes.

Restructuring and resource planning
It may be that your company needs to undergo a process of restructuring in order to best compete against the demands of a changing marketplace. Any restructuring operation must be clearly thought through and deliberate, as it may well involve the roles and careers of people within the organization. A clear resource planning document should be originated, so that you can see and justify which key skills, individuals and teams are central to the company’s future growth.

From this point, you can then begin to take steps to make the necessary adjustments to the business from a resource perspective. If managed correctly, an intelligent restructure can make a huge difference to your company’s performance and collective outlook, by tightening up unproductive areas that may otherwise remain unchecked.

Good communication lines
Within any time of change, it is crucial that you maintain clear and open channels of communication with all staff. Economic downturns are worrying times for everyone, particularly when there is a possibility of redundancies, so establishing regular communication regarding your company’s current and intended responses will help everyone involved understand the position for what it is, rather than allowing a culture of fear and uncertainly to develop, which will have a counterproductive effect on both morale and performance.

Use your recruitment company
A professional recruitment consultancy can be a valuable ally in addressing the situation from a Human Resource point of view. Recruitment consultancies have a good finger on the pulse of industry, and will be able to offer you an overall perspective on the markets. In addition, they will know where redundancies are occurring, and the scale of them, enabling you to understand your market position better. Within times like these, there is generally a flood of talented individuals being released onto the market, and a good consultancy will be able to offer specialist advice on how to access these people, should your resource planning require fresh expertise.

Alternative work arrangements
To paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is not necessarily the biggest companies that survive, but the ones that are most responsive to change. With this in mind, it may be a good idea to examine the possibility of changing the working arrangements of individuals within your business. With technologies that enable employees to work from virtually any location, more organisations will consider flexible work arrangements as increasingly viable. Similarly, savvy businesses are providing employees with the tools and flexibility to work in a number of arrangements, including part or flextime, telecommuting or job sharing.

Emphasising Creative Benefits and Incentives
When economies are not booming, companies and individuals look to different ways to incentivise and motivate staff. It may not be currently realistic to offer large bonuses to individuals that perform well, because the pool from which the bonuses are taken may itself have shrunk. It is up to management therefore, to create new and creative methods of keeping employees and teams focused on the levels of productivity required to enable your company to remain competitive. At times like these, good leadership and creative thinking have never been more vital – click on the links to read our articles on developing your teams in both these areas.

Plan for a brighter future
Early signs seem to indicate that the markets are already starting to react positively to recent government steps, although it will be some time before markets begin to operate within normal trading conditions. The economic downturn is part of a cycle however, and should therefore be treated as such. By accurately assessing your company’s resource needs, streamlining your processes, consulting with experts in their field and creating alternative strategies, you can expect to emerge a more productive, profitable and experienced company as a result.

Everyone suffers from reduced motivation at work at some point in their career. Whether it be through issues at work, or some form of external influence, a lack of motivation can have a damaging effect on both your professional performance and your general outlook, particularly in times of very real economic uncertainty and challenges.

Conversely, the ability to self-motivate is a highly prized ability within the professional sector, and can dramatically benefit your career prospects. Below are some thoughts and tips to help you create a dynamic career path through motivation.

Clarity is everything
One of the biggest blocks to motivation in the workplace is a lack of clarity about the role that you have and the goals that you need to attain in order to progress. Most professionals will probably have some form of personal development programme to draw on, although if you are feeling like you need further clarity from your line manager regarding your own position, don’t be afraid to ask.

Vague goals kill motivation. Without a clear and realistic target to reach for, it becomes very hard to motivate yourself, so arrange a meeting or bring up the issue at your next scheduled meeting with your manager. If approached in the right way, you will not only receive the clarity that you need, but you will also send a signal out to your company that you are ambitious and focused.

Invest in yourself
Motivation is closely linked to self worth, and feeling empowered to make a positive contribution in the workplace. A great way to improve these areas, and consequently your motivation, is to get some further training. The more skilled that you feel, the more motivated you will be to engage and excel within your chosen areas.

Talk to your employer about the options available for work related training, as they may already run programmes or might be willing to subsidise external training on your behalf. In addition, read around the subject at home, or take classes in the evenings to enhance your education and skillsets. It will pay dividends in your role, and your motivational energies will increase.

To help you get involved, Regan & Dean has created an association with City Lit, London’s largest provider of adult education, to offer both clients and candidates a 20% discount on business courses booked before November 30th  – Click Here for details on how to take up the offer.

Branching out
Personal development and growth are two key elements behind motivation, and neither of these can be attained unless you are prepared to branch out and take on new challenges. Without this, there is a danger that your role might become stagnant, and your enthusiasm may begin to wane.

Put yourself out there, and offer to take on new challenges and responsibilities in the workplace, creating new potential areas to work on if necessary. This will greatly impress your managers and add a new dimension of personal interest to your role, whilst helping to spread an ethos of initiative within your company.

Visualise your future
People who succeed within the business community tend to have a pretty clear and focused vision of what their future looks like. It is only through asking yourself thorough questions about your future direction that you will be able to arrive at this position, but once you are there, it becomes very easy to evaluate all professional decisions in the light of this personal vision.

There is a second benefit to this process, as this type of creative visualisation tends to elevate your perspective on your own life, place it in a dynamic context and stop you getting bogged down in the day-to-day trivialities that can be a real drain on motivation.

Get back on the horse
Motivation is not always just about enhancing positive progression, but it can also act as a powerful emotional back up should you be experiencing difficulties within your working life. Whether you are currently employed, looking for a fresh challenge, or suffering redundancy,  everyone gets knock backs from time to time, but it is your ability to stay motivated and draw upon this reservoir of self belief that will help you counter any negativity that you may experience.

Always remind yourself that any negative situation is just a phase, get back on the horse, and allow your personal motivation to override the possibility of being distracted by negative influences.

What’s Next?
If you are feeling motivated, but are unsure of what the next steps are, make sure to explore your options in your current role, speaking to and obtaining clarity from your managers about the path that they see mapped out for you.

If this does not tally with your personal goals, then perhaps it is time to look further afield for a role that matches your personal ambitions and motivations. Speak to an informed, specialist recruitment consultancy about the potential options available to you, and they may well be able to assist you in finding a different path or role equal to your motivation.