7 Must Do's to Encourage Innovation In Your Organization
With the ever increasingly fluid and competitive markets, companies are now required to introduce and encourage innovation processes in their day to day activities. In an environment marked by digital transformation and characterized by constant changes in a global market, with managers competing to be the most disruptive, innovation has become a matter of survival – Innovate or evaporate.
So, what can you do to inject innovation into the DNA of your company? Here are some measures that you can put in place to help encourage a culture of innovation in the company. Let’s see some of them.
Hire Employees With Innovative Potential
As a measure to promote innovation processes, it is the responsibility of the managers and the Human Resources department to hire the most creative and innovative applicants. They don’t always have to be the ones with the most titles or with the most experience.
Innovative employees are those who take nothing for granted, question the custom, and put passion into what they do. Investing in a great Human Resources program can be a great help to manage talent with an eye on innovation.
Lead By Example
A true leader is not the one who is higher up in the hierarchy of the business organization chart. He is the one who guides others and makes himself an excellent example to follow. For the whole company to key into the innovation culture, everyone in leadership roles has to show that they are committed to innovation.
Fostering creativity in managers, directors, and executives is essential for the culture of innovation to reach every last employee. But it must all start with you. A visionary leader would inspire his employees, but an innovative leader will get them right into the action.
Promote Innovation Among Staff
There are several essential things to keep in mind if you wish to create a corporate culture that contributes to the development of innovation processes. First, you must clearly pass the idea that the company loves innovation across the entire organization. Employees should not be afraid to propose ideas; they should be encouraged to suggest ideas.
Even if the ideas are crazy or contain basic errors, employees must know that the managers and the middle managers would not “punish” them for it. On the contrary, the innovation process should be respected, even sometimes the results aren’t perfect.
The workers must perceive that their ideas are valued. If they don’t feel this way, it would be difficult for your staff to take the trouble of participating in the innovation processes.
Create A Channel For Innovative Ideas
It is your job to make it easy for your employees to share ideas they think could help improve the company. To achieve this, it is best to create a channel for ideas to flow.
Workers’ contributions could be publicly exposed and voted on by all members of staff. The selected ones that have the most support can finally be picked up and placed before the right committee or even the boardroom to evaluate those ideas (read more about our Ideation process).
The fact that the employees themselves can vote on the ideas of their colleagues would make it possible to discard the less successful ones. But it would also be an excellent way to involve the worker in the whole process. When all workers know that their opinions count, it would further help them innovate more.
Collaborative tools that allow staff members to communicate online and conduct polls are excellent technological tools that will help you to create channels through which ideas that could transform your business in the future could easily travel.
Reward Creative Ideas
It is a really good idea to involve employees in the innovation process. It is an even better one when such employees are respected and rewarded for their innovation. Rewards may vary based on the nature of the idea and also the size of your company. It can be money, free days, or trips for the initiator of the best selected. For it to work, the incentive must be given even if the idea is not finally carried out. Some companies take it one step farther and let employees be part of a team who test and develop the new idea as a part-time job, and later, it might be their full-time job.
Make sure that both the prize and the criteria for the selection of ideas are made clear and transparent.
Provide An Environment That Encourages Brainstorming
Innovation requires brainstorming. So make sure that you make your business environment encouraging for such. There are several methodologies to accomplish this, such as Sprint, Design Thinking, Brainstorming, and other methods you can use. You can start by enabling a physical space for employees to meet during breaks.
You can also implement communication tools between professionals, teams, departments, etc. An internal team collaborative tool will play a vital role in this. Try to promote the free circulation of ideas. Like stagnant water, creativity becomes corrupted when closed groups or work teams are created.
Providing an enabling environment allows different teams to collaborate or deliberate on the work and the problems of others. Sometimes, a change of perspective can bring a renewed vision.
The employees who have been around for a long time are often the ones who have been doing things the longest in a certain way. For these people, it can sometimes be hard to see things from a new light. Creativity, however, sometimes benefits from inexperience in a field, because the new staff is less polluted by routine.
Implement Enterprise Mobility Strategies In The Company
Bright ideas do not always take place in the workspace. Often creativity approaches us when we are relaxed, without pressure or stress. How many times have you come up with innovative ideas while taking a bath?
Enterprise mobility allows workers to connect anytime, anywhere, using enterprise mobility solutions. Beyond that, companies that embrace enterprise mobility solutions are able to encourage creativity and innovation and also have a greater capacity to attract talented employees.
Innovation is essential if you want your business to grow fast. However, you can’t do it all alone. Carry the whole company along, build a strong innovation culture, and you will be able to better stand out among the competition.
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