Increasing Professionalism Without Stifling Creativity

Balancing the need for a professional, productive staff with the obvious advantages of giving your employees room to grow creatively is one of the biggest challenges facing business owners today. Many of today’s employees are young, enthusiastic and right out of college. They’re bursting with ideas and, sometimes, lacking on professionalism. While a productive and orderly workplace is vital to a business’s financial bottom line, no CEO wants to stifle the creativity of it’s employees by tying staffers down to a set of rigid rules, an iron clad attendance system and endless layers of protocol. The question on every start up owners mind is how to encourage the perfect blend of top notch professionalism and boundless creativity. Here are some tips!

Tips For Increasing Professionalism AND Creativity: 

1. Define Professionalism: Offer employees a clear set of expectations by defining what professionalism looks like for your company. Concerned about client relations, but less concerned about punctuality? Make that clear. Offer employees the chance to succeed by spelling out what your company’s values are and what your expectations of each and every staff member include. This way, employees can take note and find ways to keep the creative juices flowing in an office appropriate manner.
2. Know Your Limits: What are some hard rules for you? Is a 9am arrival for every employee an absolute must? Is it imperative for employees to utilize the biometric time clock every time they step out of the office for a beverage or to use the bathroom? Can you overlook a cluttered desk? What about social media activity during work hours? All business owners learn how to not sweat the small stuff, but the first step in learning this lesson is understanding what your “non-negotiables” are. Establish boundaries and make them clear.
3. Embrace Flexible Schedules: Studies have shown that flexible hours lead to employees experiencing a better work-life balance. This results in increased employee happiness. And, any successful business owner will tell you, a happy employee is a productive and loyal employee. Try judging employees based on output not hours. You could end up seeing astounding results!

These are just a few tips. Have you found a way the works for you? We would love to hear it! Comment and let us know how you’re succeeding. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the workday!