#494  from Innovative Leader Volume 9, Number 10          October 2000

Retaining Creative Employees
by Vaiva Vaisnys

Ms. Vaisnys was, until recently, the Human Resources Director at Jellyvision®, Inc., a company that creates interactive experiences such as the CD-Rom and internet game, You Don’t Know Jack®. The company received the year 2000 Optima Award for Innovation by Workforce magazine.  She is now with the Chicago office of Deloitte Consulting, and can be reached at vvaisnys@dc.com.

Creativity in the workplace is critical in helping companies achieve their business goals.  Harnessing creativity means not just developing ways to allow employees to be innovative, but also retaining employees so that creative momentum can build over time and not be disrupted by the constant need to recruit new personnel to fill vacant positions. 

Many elements influence job satisfaction and employee retention, such as good compensation packages and professional growth and training.  But there are also other strategies that companies, divisions within companies, or even small teams, can use to give creative personnel a reason to stay rather than look to flex their creative muscle elsewhere.

For over three years, I had the pleasure and challenge of working at Jellyvision where creativity is the lifeblood – not just among the “creatives” (e.g., writers, editors, directors, audio producers) but among all personnel, regardless of position (e.g., office management, business development, network support, human resources).  As we built the company and tried to ensure that creative people at all levels throughout the organization wanted to stay at Jellyvision, we found that there were several basic techniques that we could use to make that endeavor easier.

#1.  Foster Broad Involvement

Not surprisingly, one of the things that gives creative people satisfaction is “creating” – working with a set of variables to come up with something new.  The extent to which a company includes creative employees early on in projects, so that they have an opportunity to influence outcomes, greatly impacts employee investment in the project.  A “project” can be limited to what is in the employee’s area of expertise or, more broadly, can include work on the future of a product line, a cross-functional strategic initiative or the company itself.

At Jellyvision, the company itself is viewed as a “project” and, consequently, people are expected to devote time to “working” on it.  Input is actively sought from employees on matters relating to, for example, benefits, performance appraisal systems, marketing materials and policies.  Not only is input sought, but committees (made up of a variety of employees from various levels of the organization) are often formed to work through these company-related projects. 

For example, for a long time the only project concepts that were developed were those generated by the company’s founder.  Frustration was building among employees because there was no clear avenue through which they could submit product ideas and develop them.  As a result, the company approved the founding of the PAC (Project Approving Committee), which is an employee-run committee that evaluates new project ideas and has the authority to fund their development.  With only few guidelines to ensure that the projects the Committee approves fit into the company’s strategic direction, employees themselves defined the PAC and how it works. 

Including people in a broad range of decisions not only makes for more comprehensive discussions and therefore more creative and relevant decisions, but also serves to start building early consensus for new company initiatives.  Furthermore, active participation in making decisions about the broad spectrum of issues allows employees to help create an environment that they like and in which they would want to remain.

#2.  Define “The Box”!

Since job satisfaction is greatly influenced by a feeling of contributing toward some larger goal, it is important to support employees in a way that will allow them to easily witness how their input gets used.  To that end, it’s not so much general creativity that is important to harness as much as it is directed creativity – creativity that ultimately leads to innovative ideas that can be concretely translated into business and personal successes (whether they be products, processes, etc.).

There is a lot of talk about “thinking outside the box” to arrive at unique and creative solutions to issues at hand.  However, to truly be creative, employees should understand the context and the constraints within which they must work.  Therefore, before unleashing people to “think outside the box,” it’s important to “define the box” – explain the context and constraints of the project – and why it exists.  Otherwise people might spend precious time “fighting” the box rather than thinking creatively about how to push its limits. 

Jellyvision recently pitched a new game idea to a potential partner.  The partner was interested and was eager to begin considering marketing the game to generate early "teaser" awareness.  They specifically requested a demo version of the game, as soon as possible, to distribute to various audiences.  However, we were at a very early stage of game development, and creating a demo version of a game unfortunately requires all the work of creating the game in its entirety.  Simply put, their specific request was not feasible - it would have taken too long (potentially months) and would have tied up too many resources. 

Instead of just saying "no" to their request, we took a step back to articulate their objectives:  to communicate a sense of game play, to convey the look, feel and tone of the game and to begin communicating the brand name.  We also knew that our constraints were time, money and personnel.  Having defined "the box," a small team brainstormed ways to accomplish the partner's goals within our constraints.  This team's solution was to create a guerrilla marketing piece that gave a behind-the-scenes view of  "the making of the game."   Instead of showing the game itself, they used a digital recorder to show writers developing the game - it turned out to be a very funny and inspired way of showing the game coming to life.  Our potential partner is considering building off the initial version we presented to them and turning it into their launch campaign.   By clearly understanding objectives and constraints, in only four days and for barely any money, we were able to meet our potential partner's objectives and well exceeded expectations.

Making sure that “the box” is clearly defined has gone a long way in focusing people on the task at hand and ensuring that the creative ideas that they generate are actualized in some way.  It has significantly reduced the frustration that can develop when a team embarks down a road only to learn later that it needs to retrench and go in a different direction because certain parameters were not made clear up front.

#3.  Evaluate Processes

Once the scope and constraints of a project have been identified, processes are established to get an individual or a group from point A to point B.  If the ultimate goal is to generate creative ideas and results that further business goals, then the established processes need to incorporate steps that will help in that endeavor.  If the processes hinder people’s ability to do their work, then frustration builds, job satisfaction diminishes, and retention can become an issue.

Jellyvision holds post mortems are held after every project to review the degree to which an established process supported or hindered creativity.  These post mortems have yielded invaluable information to allow employees to significantly improve the way they do their work as well as develop more efficient ways to generate creative ideas and bring them to market. 

One example of a change we made, based on feedback gathered during post mortems, was redefining job descriptions within the graphic art department to separate art development and art production.  The unanimous consensus within the graphic art team was that hiring a production artist and allowing the remaining artists to focus on art development increased not only efficiency within the department but job satisfaction as well.

Another example is how we changed our product development process to include multiple pre-production stages.  In our early years we would launch into production and tackle problems as they occurred.  Based on feedback gathered over time, we changed our product development plans to include concept evaluation, pre-design, design and production stages.  Adding multiple pre-production stages allowed us to work through high-risk components and make necessary modifications before an entire team is deployed on project.  Working through the kinks ahead of time not only increased efficiency, but significantly diminished the frustration of having to face hurdles during production.

The use of post mortems has provided multiple benefits.  The evaluations and subsequent improvements allowed all of us to continue climbing the learning curve together and make our business more efficient.  In addition, because people participate in generating solutions that they have adopted, they felt more committed to the company, making ideas of leaving more difficult to entertain.

In Summary…

A company’s ability to achieve business success is directly related to its ability to attract and retain the “right” kinds of employees.  If turnover of stellar employees is high because the environment or management practices don’t support their creative endeavors, achieving business objectives becomes increasingly more difficult.  Certainly, providing job satisfaction and retaining top-performing employees is more complicated than simply fostering broad participation, defining “the box,” and evaluating processes.  However, adopting some of these principles can go a long way in creating an environment within which creative employees can thrive.