Evaluating the Enhancement of Creativity among Employees (Coursework Sample)

Student's Name
Professor's Name
Course
Date
Question One: Enhancement of Creativity among Employees
Introduction
Creativity and innovation are crucial elements that determine organizational growth and performance. Creativity involves generating useful novel and new ideas (Kwan et al. 166). On the other hand, innovation is the application of the generated ideas to ensure goal achievement. The paper probes techniques, tools, or policies applied by a senior manager in boosting employee's creativity. It also addresses the pitfalls that may inhibit or prevent creativity among the employees. Creativity relies on original work and its application. On the other hand, innovation depends on five elements such as associating, networking, experimenting, observing, and questioning (Bessant and Tidd). The originality of an idea depends on how the innovator evaluates it. Furthermore, creativity is a key to innovation; however, success depends on how the idea will be implemented by the organization (Kwan et al. 166). It is not limited to random ideas and associations but depends on how much value or change the generated idea will have on the current organizational performance. Innovation is a complex process and varies from idea establishment, implementation, and market penetration. It describes the organization's propensity to incorporate new technology and processes (Ferreira, Arnaldo, and Luiz 4). The vital element of creativity is its basis to enable people to come with diverse ideas and implement them through appropriate solutions to gain a higher competitive advantage. A good example of an innovator is one who comes up with a new product idea and implements it, resulting in a unique market approach, sales, and customer influence. Therefore, creativity is incomplete without innovation. Creativity and innovation enable organizations to refine their existing ideas through appropriate frameworks, solutions, methodologies to maintain brand and customer loyalty.
Techniques, Policies, or Techniques to Enhance Creativity among Employees
Creating a Creative and Supportive Environment
Developing a conducive and supportive environment is one of the key ways for the employees to be made creative. The manager needs to stimulate the workplace environment, which allows sufficient interactions among the employees. The conducive spaces have been identified to enable the employees to comment, suggest and develop new ideas (Bessant and Tidd). A real-life example of such a strategy is Kaizen, employed by Toyota. It focused on spending minimum time during night shift to enable the employees to socialize and react towards company progress (Bessant and Tidd). It is from the established time which the employees used to generate creative ideas. The approach enabled the employees to interact and share their mistakes. Notably, allowing the employees to know their mistakes helps them improve their creative skills. Additionally, a conducive and supportive environment enables the employees to realize their capabilities towards generating creative ideas. Therefore, creating such an environment is a technique that allows employees to think beyond the existing products and be creative.
Group-Work and Brainstorming
Regardless of the employees embracing creativity while alone, group work plays a crucial role in amplifying idea generation. It enables employees to have an influx of ideological solutions which are paramount for creativity. Group work is vital since it brings together employees with diverse experiences, perspectives, and diversities. Therefore, one idea can be generated by an employee but reframed and implemented at a group level. Such strategies are evident in real-life companies and business partners, including Andy Groove and Bill Gates (Bessant and Tidd 4). Furthermore, brainstorming is also applicable in promoting employees' creativity, especially at the group level. It enable the employees to contribute half-based ideas which can be unified to establish an essential product generation process. It also enhance confidence among the employees towards contributing to specific product ideas. Therefore, from diverse ideas discovered from brainstorming, the organization can use this opportunity to pick the most appealing, productive, and worth implementing. The group also has the opportunity to discuss and eliminate ideas that may be costly. Therefore, embracing group work and brainstorming by the senior manager would also lead to social pressure, a key aspect of employee creativity.
The problem-first model can also complement group work to improve creativity. Since creativity involves establishing valuable and novel processes, problem-solving is a key aspect for creative ideas. This can only be achieved by adhering to group work. The Problem-first model promotes employee creativity through developing the idea to solve an existing or future organizational problem. For instance, Toyota targets transformation to an electric car to resolve environmental issues such as excess Carbon emitted (Bessant and Tidd). In this case, creativity assists both the company and other stakeholders, such as the community. The model is vital since it ensures consistent research on the group ideas to solve the existing issue. The employees must rigorously engage in idea-generating activities which suit the organization's standards. Therefore, group work, brainstorming, and the problem-first model are crucial in making the employees enhance their creativity due to the ability to repeat the idea generation activities.
Rewarding
Rewarding is an essential technique in any organization. According to Auger and Richard, rewarding (Intrinsic motivation) promote self-satisfaction, satisfying interests, and personal challenge (p.2). Creative behaviors come from an employee's self-stimulation. Rewarding intrinsically motivates the employees towards engaging in idea-generating activities. Rewarding may not be necessary for monetary form but verbal recognition of employees' success and efforts. As a senior manager, it is essential to regulate rewarding techniques. More rewarding may make the employees retrieve from creative behaviors. Regulating creative personalities should be tailored towards the organization's strategic direction (Bessant and Tidd). Therefore, reward as a tool will also stimulate other pessimistic employees towards understanding creativity and its benefits.
Additionally, the manager should also reward failures. Motivation is not restricted to success. Failed employees have insights into creative behaviors. Motivating them boosts their morale of attaining idea generation goals. Intrinsic motivation improves the employee's cognitive dimension and perception of success (Auger and Richard 3). Creativity requires adequate skills, which only motivated employees can achieve. Rewarding improve cognitive skills, especially among the employees who at one time failed. Rewarding failure builds confidence among the employees. Any fear that may make the employee retrieve from creating thinking is resolved. Lastly, rewarding the failed employees will also create a conducive environment for employee interaction to attain success. McDonald's is an example of a company that rewards both success and failed employees leading to organizational growth (Bessant and Tidd). Therefore, all the identified rewarding techniques play a crucial role in cognitive development and creativity.
Factors inhibiting Creativity among Employees
Creativity is inherent; thus, everyone has the capability of being creative. However, it must be stimulated by specific secondary methods. Developing unique methods enable the management to determine the employee's creativity. There exist specific barriers which inhibit individuals from portraying their creative behaviors. The barriers may affect the employees directly from the organization's management or indirectly by organizational environment. They include non-conducive environment for creative behaviors, hierarchical pressure, and managerial influence.
Non-conducive Environment for Creative Behaviors
Creativity relies on the organization's environment. External influence from the organizations may limit employee participation, such as discouraging phrases. Without a conducive environment, the employees find it challenging to participate in idea-generating forums. They are not motivated to think beyond the already set organizational ideas. Auger and Richard note that motivation is a key factor to creativity (p.3). Therefore, non-conducive environment demotivates creative behaviors. One of the most common unconducive environment which heavily limits creativity is bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are strict rules and regulations. They limit the employees from being productive and innovative. The employees are not able to freely interact and share common innovative ideologies.
Managerial Influence
The most direct influencer among the employees is managers. They are responsible for aligning organizational goals and employee performance. Manager's influence may contribute to reduced creativity among the employees. The managers are the motivators towards innovation and creativity. Therefore, how they accommodate the employees in an organization determines the rate of creativity and innovation. Whenever managers fail to support their employees, they tend to neglect the secondary role of promoting creativity. During the idea-generating process, employees require full support with adequate plans to devise new ideas. Additionally, the managers can influence the employees towards creativity and innovation by setting aside interaction time for group work, such as Toyota's Kaizen case (Bessant and Tidd). However, whenever such interaction ti...