Let Your Frontline Workers Be Creative

by David Burkus

We know that creativity and innovation fuel new products, services, even strategies. But too many executives make the mistake of assuming creativity is just reserved for a certain department or just the white-collar knowledge-workers in their firms. New research shows how important it is for all employees to be creative, even if they’re not high up on the org chart.

One new research paper looked at how creativity, or the lack thereof, affected customers’ perception of customer service. The researchers found that the creativity of front-line service employees (which they called “service creativity”) directly affected customer services ratings. “Service creativity allows employees to delight customers in unusual ways or solve problems that existing protocol falls short of addressing,” said Jing Zhou, a co-author on the study and professor of management at Rice University. “The findings suggest that service creativity is a powerful avenue through which customer satisfaction can be achieved.”

Read the full article on HBR.

David Burkus is the author of Under New Management and this month’s Thinker of the Month.