Work environments for employee creativity

Innovative organisations need creative employees who generate new ideas for product or process innovation. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the effect of personal, social-organisational and physical factors on employee creativity. Based on this framework, an instrument to analyse the extent to which the work environment enhances creativity is developed. This instrument was applied to a sample of 409 employees and support was found for the hypothesis that a creative work environment enhances creative performance. This paper illustrates how the instrument can be used in companies to select and implement improvements. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: The ergonomics discipline addresses the work environment mainly for improving health and safety and sometimes productivity and quality. This paper opens a new area for ergonomics: designing work environments for enhancing employee creativity in order to strengthen an organisation's capability for product and process innovation and, consequently, its competitiveness.