Creativity in Human Resources
Any growing company now needs to be creative in order to succeed. It can be achieved by changing the way things are seen, sharing new ideas, and implementing innovative new ideas. The findings become integral to HR improvements as a result.
Creativity is surely important if you run an institution. Your employees must be able to come up with exciting ideas, interactive implementation, and great marketing skills. However, this can’t be inborn. You will need to have corporate training sessions in a way that is easy for the new hires to grasp the information.
So, how can the HR system encourage an innovative culture? Many researchers believe that creativity is essential to the long-term survival of a business. In this era of globalization, it helps businesses attain a competitive advantage by maintaining a competitive edge. Consequently, nurturing and encouraging inventiveness is a strategic choice for any successful business. Each organization's human resources department facilitates the means to attain these creativity goals.
Your Human Resource department must follow these creative tips for employee learning and training so they can come up with an interactive instructional design.
1. Assign Engaging and Interesting Tasks
No one likes doing dull and boring tasks, it doesn’t matter how much they are being paid for it. It can be certain that a genuinely engaging work environment is more important for a culture of innovation than financial rewards. A report indicated that engagement was strongly correlated with creative work behavior. Do engagements promote innovation? Or do engagements promote creativity? Maybe it is a little bit of both. You will eventually see that your employees become more innovative if you give them more interesting work.
Therefore, make sure you assign tasks according to the interest level of each employee. For instance, you can’t assign the task of curriculum development to a graphic designer, no matter how knowledgeable he may be.
2. Allow Flexible Work Schedule
A human resource manager is often expected to have employees work from 9 am to 5 pm. You must, however, give creative minds more time in practice and in the workplace to maximize their creativity. This is because, although they collaborate with the teammates for ideas, they also want some time alone to rethink those ideas. Moreover, fixing a work schedule can stifle employees instead of motivating them.
Therefore, give at least 24 hours to your employees, so they have enough time to work and deliver a particular task.
3. Train them to create interactive videos
The most important part of an e-learning design is videos, either individual or for an entire course. Therefore, Human resources must be able to develop strong strategies for knowledge sharing and employee engagement regarding interactive videos. You should consider the following elements during corporate training.
3.1. Gamification
Most marketers use gamification in their videos to make them engaging and enhance the competitive edge. It is particularly a great way of creating interesting content, where you can add branching options or short and easy levels within the videos, enabling your viewers to select their desired adventure and enjoy the exciting experience. When learning and training are mixed with fun, learners are more likely to retain the information for longer periods.
You don’t need to ask your employees to use complex tools for adding gamification in the videos. They can easily rely on Cinema8 for the convenient and smart features it offers.
3.2. Interactive Elements
In addition to engaging the learner, interactive elements improve the training process. You can tell your employees to use the following features when developing an interactive video:
- Hotspots: These are the areas that can be clicked on in the video. These can be used by brands to direct viewers to different web pages for additional information, as well as reveal more relevant information within the video.
- 360 views: This feature allows viewers to change the angle of the video and experience the video in 360 degrees.
- Quizzes: Ask them to add short and relevant quizzes at the end of each module or video to assess users' attention and help them retain information.
- Images or gifs: Long, direct paragraphs of texts can lead to cognitive overload for learners. Adding a few relevant images or gifs can keep them engaged as well as help them grasp the information more easily.
Luckily, you don’t need separate tools for every element. Cinema8 provides a wide range of interactive features that are easy to use! Train your employees using Cinema8 to help them master the art of e-learning.
3.3 Engaging Colors
Colors play a significant role in learning, especially when we talk about online learning. When students aren’t physically present, it becomes quite difficult to know what strategies will work best. So, if you want learners to pay attention to particular information or direct them to another video or page, you can use different colors for emphasis, such as red.
The power of colors to evoke emotion and convey meaning cannot be underestimated. Therefore, tell your new hires to use relevant and engaging colors during the learning and development process. For this, you can refer our blogs, Color Theory - How to Use Colors in Design and How Colors Affect Your Brand Marketing to them.
3.4. A balance between text and images
Just like long paragraphs are not appreciated, using too many images or graphics is also not recommended. While corporate training, tell your employees that a balance between both is required so the students can read between the lines and fully grasp the concept through images. Ensure that they keep the visual content low (where necessary) and relevant to the topic.
Read our article on 12 Most Common E-learning Mistakes You Should Avoid for further details.
3.5. Keep Your Target Audience in Mind
Who are you creating the e-learning content for? Definitely your audience! Not considering their needs and problems is simply a waste of time and energy because your course will not be of any use to them if it is not human-centered.
Therefore, it is highly recommended to educate your new hires to create an online course that solves learners’ problems during the learning and training process. For this, ask them to picture themselves in the learner’s shoe, ask what issues must be resolved, and what questions may arise in their minds. Once they have answers to these, they can surely come up with something useful.
Visit our article on What is Human-Centered Instructional Design for further details.
4. Do not Fear Failure
Fear of being failed is the biggest enemy of any kind of creativity. Therefore, tell your new hires that failing is okay. Failure is not a static but a dynamic framework, so it may possess positive implications. By failing, your workers can learn, amend, and reorient innovative processes. While revising their current routines, they might end up with some novel and better plans.
5. Provide a Friendly Environment
Generally, an employee spends almost 40 hours per week at their workplace, which can surely be boring and stressful. According to a study, employees perform better when provided with complete support and a friendly environment. This will not only attract new employees but keep the great ones as well.
A comfortable and friendly environment is especially important if you are an institution. Whether you provide online training or physical, your staff must have collaborative relationships to allow the flow of ideas. They will feel free to express their innovative ideas and thoughts and ultimately help your brand flourish.
6. Hire Creative People
While interviewing, instructional design HR must be able to gauge which candidate is creative and a better fit for the job. It is the best opportunity that you must avail. Examine your job description - your language and the skills you mentioned. Do they seem static? Creativity attracts creative individuals. So, add a little flavor to your job description.
In addition, to show that a candidate is innovative, try asking questions about the 'how' and 'why' of some problems. You may ask questions like: “How are you a perfect fit for this job?” or “why did you find your previous job challenging?”. A question like this asks you to figure out how a candidate solves problems. It will be possible for you to see how they will use their skills to add creativity to your business.
7. Reward Them
The HR department should see who is dedicated to the work. Your employees certainly deserve incentives if they are going above and beyond and putting their all into work. This is not only an appreciation but also a motivation for them to keep continuing their good work and for others to work even harder. A popular way of doing so is by offering financial incentives.
Popular Methods of Employee Training
Each year, we see an ever-expanding variety of staff training methods. It is this flexibility that allows every department, team, and company to find the most effective corporate training method. Interested in knowing different ways of knowledge sharing and employee engagement? Here is a quick look at the various kinds of employee training methods you can use.
Traditional Training Programs
In many organizations today, traditional learning and training still offer several benefits. Listed below are some traditional training methods you should consider when selecting the best waysbecauseSocial of training employees in your organization.
1. Classroom Based Training
Classroom learning usually takes place over a couple of days at a physical location, either on-site or off-site, under the guidance of a qualified instructor. Groups of employees participate in a series of presentations and activities, such as case studies or information regarding company policies.
Classroom training offers the benefit of allowing a group of employees to gain a large amount of knowledge simultaneously. However, this training method has many disadvantages: travel, arranging venues, and catering make it expensive. This kind of training is also tedious for employees.
2. Interactive Training
Interactive training is a highly effective training method in the workplace that actively involves the new hires in the training session. You can use scenarios, role plays, simulations, quizzes, and games during this kind of training.
Practice makes perfect, and learners who apply what they've learned in realistic work situations are not only more engaged but better able to retain the information learned. However, in-person training can be a time-consuming process, particularly when learners need feedback regularly from a content expert.
3. Workplace training
As part of workplace training, employees are actively engaged in learning and development as well as participating in real work-related activities. Such training methods are extremely helpful in succession planning.
Employees can learn quickly through this type of training since they are immersed in it from the start. However, some employees find this experience stressful and time-consuming since frequent input is required.
Modern Training Programs
Modern workplaces have a diversity of cultures and remote workers, so training methods have evolved accordingly. How should we teach in this type of setting? It's simple: We should train through social learning and online.
1. Social Learning
According to Albert Bandura's work in the 1970s, social learning refers to observing, copying, and modeling others' behavior in order to learn from them. It is also a very useful method for training employees at a workplace.
The reason social learning is not included in many common training methods is that it's difficult to organize, measure, and manage. This method of training employees can be extremely effective because it pushes them beyond their everyday roles, allowing them to expand their perspectives and problem-solving abilities.
2. Online Training
It is becoming increasingly common for organizations to use online training as one of the most effective methods to train their employees. Programs for workplace training can be conducted using webinars, e-learning courses, videos, etc., and provide a variety of ways to present and test the information.
With online training, employees can choose a course that suits their learning style and current needs. Employees can also learn wherever they are.
Bottomline
Every employee is innately innovative and creative. Many businesses, however, unknowingly hinder their growth. Without creativity, it is difficult to grow a business that offers top-notch services and products while retaining a competitive edge.
Human Resources must be creative and know how to deal with every employee. They should know what strategies to use for knowledge sharing and employee training.