Creativity and health

Ahen the European Union declared 2009 the "European Year of Creativity and Innovation", the aim was to raise awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development. The core

A question of survival

message was clear: Above all in business life, the ability to innovate and creativity are becoming central issues for the survival of companies. Creative ideas instead of standardized production technologies are essential for companies to survive in the global market.

Success with the "best brains

This puts the focus of interest on people and their cognitive abilities. Muscular strength and physical performance are increasingly becoming exchangeable labour capital, as the relocation of production activities to so-called "low-wage countries" shows. Competitive advantages cannot be achieved with these classic work skills - nor, incidentally, with outstanding production factors that can be reproduced at many locations today. Rather, the successful companies in the knowledge society are those with the "best brains". Terms such as "human capital" or "human resource management" have dominated every congress and business discussion since then.

It remains questionable, however, whether the strategies propagated to promote human capital are really appropriate. People are expected to be increasingly flexible in terms of time and place, routine activities are decreasing, time pressure is increasing, and personal responsibility is rising. In the maelstrom of modern information technologies, absorbing and processing information quickly becomes too much. Multitasking skills and constant availability characterize many jobs. And: At the same time, more and more "creativity" is demanded. All this is giving rise to a new world of life and work - characterized by increasing uncertainty, considerable stress and impaired opportunities for recreation. The consequence: changing performance requirements do not remain without effects on the health of employees.

Added to this is demographic change. "Aging" industrial nations such as Switzerland and Germany are particularly affected by this. The battle for qualified specialists is in full swing. Companies will only be able to compete in the near future if they distinguish themselves as "good" employers and with working conditions that maintain and promote the health and performance of their employees.

Mental illnesses

However, while the number of accidents and occupational illnesses is tending to fall, depressive disorders and mental illnesses are increasing dramatically. Precise data on this are lacking in Switzerland. Nevertheless, international experts paint a gloomy picture. According to statistics from the Federal Association of German Company Health Insurance Funds, the share of mental illnesses in sick days has tripled in a short time. Production losses in the billions are the result. The World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts a picture of increasingly mentally ill and depressed societies in the near future of industrialized countries - a scenario that is anything but optimistic in view of the demanding entrepreneurial challenges.

The rise in work-related mental and psychosomatic illnesses is increasingly coming to the fore as a trend. In view of the high

Threatening situation

costs of sickness-related absenteeism and lost production, it is now perceived by the business community as a serious threat. It is becoming increasingly clear: Success factors such as innovation and creativity need a correlate in the psychophysical health of employees, otherwise they will not work.

The connections between work and health are well known. However, the question of "health-critical" aspects in dealing with creativity as a work requirement remains largely ignored. Which forms of work design promote creativity and health? Where are the inhibiting working conditions? Answers to these questions should help to prepare the development of company interventions. A project initiated by the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAU) has dealt with these questions. The final report was recently published (see box).

New, original and useful

Creativity at work

In contrast to general (neurobiological) creativity research, there are comparatively few theories for describing and explaining creativity in work. However, it is generally agreed that for companies, creative achievements comprise products, ideas or procedures that meet two conditions: They must be novel and original and useful to the organization. Creativity is about performance on an individual level, while the (successful) implementation of these ideas on an organisational level is called innovation. Innovation is understood as a continuous process from the generation and further development of ideas to their implementation and stabilization, a process that is essentially triggered by the creativity of employees. Not only, but to a large extent, the working conditions are decisive in enabling employees to develop their creative potential.

What characterizes a creative person? In addition to factual knowledge, technical skills and the ability to solve problems thanks to new perspectives, intrinsic motivation, or the will to do so, which comes from within, plays a decisive role. The degree of creativity is all the higher when a person's personal skills and talents overlap with their intrinsic task motivation.

What promotes, what hinders creativity?

Companies can promote this attitude most specifically and most quickly through organisational culture and work design. Working conditions that promote creativity are: challenging work tasks, freedom (in the sense of scope for activity), sufficient material and immaterial resources, support from the characteristics of a work group, support from the supervisor and from the organisation.

Conversely, creativity is hindered by organisational conditions such as micro-politics, i.e. the many everyday "little" power games, by harsh criticism of new ideas, avoidance of risks, etc., as well as by workloads (for example, time pressure, unrealistic expectations and distractions from creative work). In summary, workplace characteristics are the clearest predictors of creativity, especially work complexity, autonomy or scope of activity, and perceived creativity demands.

Focus on stresses

On the one hand, stresses have a positive and health-promoting effect on people. The working person builds up and maintains functions such as his muscles, for example, and he

Positive and negative stress

trains memory or practises skills - subjectively and performance-determining. Through stress, it mobilises resources and activates functions. Positive effects of stress can be seen above all with regard to competence and personality development, but also in job satisfaction. In addition to the aforementioned intrinsic work motivation, it was possible to demonstrate the strengthening or maintenance of individual professional competence and intellectual performance as a result of a favourable constellation of demands and resources. Self-confidence, social competence, commitment and specific characteristics such as intellectual flexibility and creativity are also confirmed as positive consequences of stress (Figure 1). On the other hand, so-called "false stress" reduces performance, weakens the currently available resources and diminishes well-being. Individually, this leads to fluctuations in performance, a decrease in concentration and mistakes. Learning processes fail to take place. Frustration and tension are accompanied by feelings of fatigue, monotony or satiety. Psychological resources such as concentration, attention or balance - as important prerequisites for the successful accomplishment of work tasks - are no longer adequately regenerated. In the medium term, psychosomatic complaints, resignation and depression come to the fore as negative consequences of stress. At the same time, negative social effects such as conflicts, quarrels, aggression or social withdrawal can often be observed, which in turn can create new problem situations.

Modern brain research has shown that psychological pain (such as the feeling of being socially excluded) activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. In the long term, such health impairments lead to manifest mental and physical illnesses and - in addition to individual suffering - to considerable absenteeism due to inability to work.

Integrated approach

Recommendations for practice

The comments on creativity and on the positive and negative stresses at work show how elementary it will be in future to design work in a way that encompasses both aspects. Successful work design should address creativity and health in an integrated manner.

In the BAU project, a model was developed that assumes two chains of consequences of constellations of conditions: High learning requirements and high resources, mediated via positive stress consequences, lead to long-term high performance such as creativity. High stressors and low resources, on the other hand, lead to health impairments via negative stress consequences (Figure 1).

Four areas were identified in the inventory of working conditions relevant to creativity and health:

1. autonomy at work

It seems to have the strongest positive influence on creativity and health. In order to increase autonomy, employees should be given extensive scope for action at work. This includes - following the Zurich work psychologist Prof. Eberhard Ulich - room for manoeuvre which allows employees to independently select procedures and means as well as the temporal organisation of a task; the scope for design which gives possibilities for the independent design of procedures; and as the most essential aspect the scope for decision-making which grants employees decision-making competences in their activities. It is therefore recommended that the employee should (as far as possible) be responsible for determining the place, time and content or type of performance.

2. diversity of requirements

According to interviews and questionnaire studies, this clearly has positive effects on health and creativity. In addition to the need to offer employees varied tasks, for example through job enrichment, diversity of requirements can also be increased indirectly by, for example, "softening" the boundaries between divisions and departments, thus promoting cooperation and support between areas, or positively valuing employees' involvement with problems in other areas of activity.

3. creative self-efficacy

It also contributes significantly to creativity and health at work. How can the experience of creative self-efficacy be strengthened? On the training side, of course, we can think of a wide variety of creativity training courses that allow employees to experience their own creativity and to acquire the conviction that they can be creative. But creative self-efficacy can also be supported in the workplace. Generally, it is built by allowing people to try things out (keyword: fault tolerance) and receiving feedback from managers about their actions. A culture of error-friendliness allows employees to try things out and play with ideas without fear, which often directly enables creative solutions.

4. team climate, cooperation and communication This fourth area can also be designed in such a way that creativity and health are positively influenced. Many possibilities for strengthening a positive team climate and good cooperation are conceivable here - from joint leisure activities for employees and flat hierarchies to communication and cooperation-friendly design of the company premises. For example, modern office concepts offer an environment that promotes communication and enables both teamwork and concentrated individual work. Shared spaces (archives and databases) can promote the possibility of formal and informal communication and cooperation. However, it does not seem to make much sense to impose binding rules on such offerings, as this would run counter to the employees' self-determination in the sense of autonomy in their work activities.

Conclusion

Against the background of changing demographic conditions, the short-lived nature of innovations in a globalised market and the horrendous costs to individual companies and the national economy caused by mental stress, it can only be in the interests of all those involved to design work in such a way that it promotes creativity and health in the long term and thus also maintains the competitiveness of companies.