Happy marriages drive employee creativity, innovation - study

KUALA LUMPUR, May 29 -- Research conducted by Professor Xu Huang from the School of Business of Hong Kong Baptist University suggests that a key to taking employee creativity to the next level is investing in their relationships at home.

According to a statement, the study looked at how satisfying marriages impact an employee’s ‘psychological resources’ at work - namely their ability to be creative and innovate useful solutions.

The study showed that employees satisfied with their marriages experience positive spillover of psychological resources into their work and when an employee’s spouse is also happy, this spillover effect is more pronounced and powerfully enriches workplace creativity.

This boost applies only to less creative employees, as highly creative individuals rely less on resources from a good marriage.

Marriages with dissatisfied spouses and less intimacy consume employees’ psychological resources, indicating that partners can exert strong influence over an employee’s work performance and a high-quality marriage is conducive to creativity at work.

Based on the statement, these are ways to support employee’s relationships and improve creativity at the office - see family-friendly policies as investments in innovation; observe spousal needs in work-life balance initiatives; and, prioritise relationships of less creative employees.

More information is available at https://bus.hkbu.edu.hk 

-- BERNAMA