1. Empower and Support Employee Innovation: Organizations should empower employees to generate new ideas and support them in developing viable business propositions by providing time, resources, and a fear-free environment for experimentation.
2. Recognize and Reward Innovation Efforts: A culture of innovation thrives when companies recognize and reward employees for their innovative efforts, reinforcing the value of trial and error and learning from failures.
3. Integrate Rewards with Innovation Activities: Integrating rewards and recognition programs with innovation efforts at various stages (ideation, proof of concept, etc.) motivates employees to contribute creatively and strategically to business growth.
4. Promote Innovation Through Contests and Social Recognition: Organizing challenges like hackathons and fostering social recognition for innovators boosts motivation and engagement, enhancing individual and team contributions to innovation.
If organizations are to generate new business ideas, they must promote creativity and innovation in the workplace. Creating a culture of innovation through employee recognition is one of the best ways to build a workforce that constantly generates new ideas, products, and services.
Nearly 35% of the revenues generated by businesses are from products and services that were developed within the last 5 years, as per different studies.
A culture of innovation provides the right environment for encouraging such activities at the workplace.
The absence of the right culture can discourage employees from investing their time and energy in exploring new ideas and eventually hinder business success.
Here is how organizations can build a culture of innovation:
1. Empower Employees and Create an Innovation Funnel
2. Provide Time and Resources to Employees to Explore New Ideas
3. Recognize Innovation Efforts and Remove Fear of Failure
Organizations need to enable employees to generate new ideas and champion and support them in turning these ideas into viable business propositions.
Companies like Pixar and Tesla allow employees to come up with new ideas, provide them feedback regularly, and take the best ones to the next level.
Additionally, organizations with a history of innovation allow employees to work on new ideas and projects. They provide employees with the space, tools, and other facilities required to work on such initiatives.
Companies such as 3M dedicate 15% of employees’ time to innovation. The Post-It note was invented during this 15% time.
Google and HP give 20% of the time for innovation. Google Earth and Gmail were invented during this ‘innovation time’.
Significantly, innovative companies recognize the efforts of their employees toward innovation.
Organizations reward such efforts and are recognized socially by other employees.
Hence, trial-and-error and test-and-learn are valued in such organizations.
Thus, these organizations understand that it is almost impossible for any successful innovation to be done without facing multiple failures.
At a global company in the paint manufacturing industry, the HiFives employee rewards and recognition platform is being leveraged to drive innovation and process improvements.
Through the HiFives platform, employees can submit their ideas and solutions for various technical and business problems related to productivity, quality, safety, and the environment. Their supervisors and other managers then evaluate these ideas, and the best ideas are selected and rewarded on the platform itself.
This encourages employees to submit thousands of ideas each quarter, contributing to several million dollars in cost savings and other benefits for the company.
Employee recognition can help organizations motivate their workforce to higher performance levels and display the desired behavior in alignment with their corporate values.
Hence, innovation can be promoted by organizations by rewarding and recognizing employees for their efforts and performance toward that goal.
Here’s how:
1. Integrate Reward and Recognition with Innovation Efforts
2. Incentivize Kaizen, Lean, and Six Sigma Projects
3. Organize Challenges, Contests, and Hackathons with Grand Prizes
4. Enable Social Recognition for Innovators
Integrating the reward and recognition program with the employees’ innovation efforts can motivate them to continue exploring new ideas.
Thus, it demonstrates the support and appreciation of their organizations for their efforts toward innovation and business growth.
So, organizations should give rewards at different stages of the lifecycle of new ideas – ideation, business viability, proof of concept, and monetization/ business impact.
These ideas’ monetary values and social visibility could vary according to their stage in the ideas funnel.
Continuous improvements and small innovation efforts are also important for the organization to drive higher levels of productivity, efficiency, and business impact.
Hence, organizations in the manufacturing industry that run Kaizen programs should reward and recognize such initiatives.
Organizations in the services industries, such as financial services, business process outsourcing, and IT services, should reward employees for taking up and completing Lean and Six Sigma projects.
These projects often help the organization enhance customer satisfaction, productivity, and output quality and reduce costs.
Hackathons, contests, and challenges are effective ways for organizations to find innovative solutions for existing business or technical problems and also to develop new product/ business ideas.
Usually, internal teams would participate in such events.
Organizations should reward teams with the best projects to drive higher levels of participation, innovation, and business impact.
Additionally, organizations should recognize employees with the best ideas, innovation projects, and initiatives.
Social visibility and peer recognition can be quite effective in motivating employees towards innovation, in addition to monetary rewards.
Organizations should leverage forums such as online or virtual team meetings, town halls, or award ceremonies to recognize these ‘innovators.’
They should also use digital platforms like the intranet, MS Teams, and Slack channels to create greater social visibility.
Also read: Creating a Culture of Collaboration through Employee Recognition.
Innovation is the key for organizations to develop sustainable competitive advantage. Creating a culture of innovation through employee recognition can be an effective way for organizations to drive innovation and business growth.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurship experience. In the past, Sagar has worked in leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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