How All Work and No Play Affects Your Startup Innovation

It’s hard for some people to think of the workplace as a place for fun.

Building a startup into a successful company is serious business and something that requires a lot of focus and direction. However, if you don’t allow any room for creativity and innovation in your workplace, then your venture will suffer.

The benefits of fun and freedom in the startup environment range from everything from reduced stress to out-of-the-box thinking.

There’s a reason why leading companies like Google provide their employees with various opportunities for play in the form of things like bowling and beach volley in the middle of their workdays.

Figuring out how to give your team members more access to fun at work could be the easiest way to accelerate your growth as a budding startup.

How to Bring More Play to the Workforce

The good news is that adopting a more playful culture in your workplace is easier than you might think. For most managers, the key to success is recognizing when to let go of the reins a little bit, or try something new.

For instance, you could try:

Intrapreneurship

The concept of intrapreneurship is very popular in the start-up world. It involved encouraging people in your team to think like entrepreneurs and bring their ideas for growth into the company.

You can develop intrapreneurship in your workplace with things like creating communities where your team members can go to share their ideas.

Encourage your staff to do their research on ways to grow the company and reward everyone for the ideas they share – even if you don’t think the ideas are very good.

The best way to encourage creativity in any workplace is to reward experimentation and thinking outside of the box.

Not every experiment that your employees invest in will be a success, but the more you encourage this frame of mind, the more comfortable your team members will be trying something new.

Allow for More Daydreaming

Procrastination is often thought of as the enemy of productivity. However, sometimes your employees might need a moment to slow down and let their minds wander.

William McKnight introduced the concept of fifteen percent time. He believed that employees should spend 15% of their time at work daydreaming and experimenting with ideas that allow them to break free from the status quo.

Allowing your team members to daydream might mean that some jobs get done a little slower, but you could also cultivate invention and innovation this way. Remember, supporting regular time off for your team members can help to give them more moments to daydream too.

Encourage Team Bonding

Employees that feel comfortable working together also feel more able to bounce ideas off each other and help their colleagues out with various projects.

There are various ways that business leaders can encourage team bonding, from hosting sessions where teams are taught to rely on each other with things like team sports, to providing team members with a dedicated lunch or break room.

Make sure that your employees have the freedom to interact with each other and share ideas.

If some of your employees are contributing to your workforce remotely, then you should have a collaboration tool in a place like Slack or Microsoft Teams, where everyone can connect.

Shake Things Up

Rather than forcing your employees to follow through with the same mundane and repetitive tasks every day, give them a chance to do something new from time to time.

You might find that allowing the people in your team to take on tasks outside of their usual wheelhouse helps them to develop new skills and points of view.

Remember, when employees are overworked and bored in their environment, they often become disengaged, and productivity suffers.

Providing regular opportunities for your staff to shake things up and explore new opportunities means that they could start to re-engage with the workforce.

You could even consider giving employees time to work outside the office or take classes to expand their skills from time to time too.

Be More Progressive

There are few better ways to engage your team and encourage more innovation than to lead by example.

The leaders in any creative startup should be role models for passion and positivity in the workplace. Provide your employees with a clear vision and direction to follow, but make sure you take their opinions and thoughts into account too.

You may learn that even slightly adjusting your leadership style leads to tremendous results for your company.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Play

All businesses thrive when creativity is allowed to flourish within the workplace. Play and fun might not be the words that you would typically associate with a growing company.

However, in a startup, it’s moments of passion and innovation that allow companies to transform.

Not only does bringing more fun into your workplace mean that you’ll end up with more innovative ideas on how to beat the competition, but it could mean that you have happier employees too.

Team members that have fun at work are more likely to be productive and engaged by their jobs. This also means that you’re less likely to waste time on training new people to join your team and dealing with the expense of turnover.

Also, because your employees are more passionate about their jobs, they’ll be more willing to go above and beyond to deliver the results that your business needs.

That way, playtime benefits every element of your company, from staff morale to your bottom line.