COLUMN - Executive Talk
Here are 10 ways to encourage innovation at your workplace:
1. Give employees a reason to care
The fact is, if people aren’t feeling connected to your company, there’s little incentive for them to be innovative. Make sure your employees are in the loop on your firm’s strategies and challenges, and invite their input. Employees who are involved early on in processes and plans will be motivated to see them through to completion.
2. Stress the importance of innovation
Ensure all your employees know that you want to hear their ideas. Unless they understand how innovating your business processes can keep your firm competitive, your efforts at encouraging creative thinking risk falling flat.
3. Schedule time for brainstorming
Allocate time for new ideas to emerge. For example, set aside time for brainstorming, hold regular group workshops, and arrange team days out.
A team involved in a brainstorming session is likely to be more effective than the sum of its parts. You can also place suggestion boxes around the workplace, appeal for new ideas to solve particular problems, and always keep your door open to suggestions and new ideas.
4. Train staff in innovation techniques
Your staff may be able to bounce an idea around, but be unfamiliar with the skills involved in creative problem solving. You may find training sessions in formal techniques, such as lateral thinking and mind mapping, worthwhile.
5. Encourage change
Broadening people’s experiences can be a great way to spark ideas. Short-term job swaps can introduce a fresh perspective to job roles. Encourage people to look at how other businesses do things, even those in other sectors, and consider how they can be adapted or improved.
According to the Bayt.com ‘Innovation in the MENA Workplace’ poll, 69% of respondents state that their companies keep up-to-date with other organizations in their field and adopt best practices.
6. Challenge the way staff work
Encourage employees to keep looking anew at the way they approach their work. Ask people whether they have considered alternative ways of working and what might be achieved by doing things differently. 78% of respondents in the Bayt.com ‘Innovation in the MENA Workplace’ poll say that new ideas in their organization are encouraged and tried out.
7. Be supportive
Respond enthusiastically to all ideas and never make someone offering an idea feel foolish. Give even the most apparently eccentric of ideas a chance to be aired.
8. Tolerate mistakes
A certain amount of risk taking is inevitable with innovation. Allow people to make mistakes and learn from them. Never put off the creative flow by penalizing those whose ideas don’t work out.
9. Reward creativity
Be among the 44% of companies that reward their employees’ creativity (as per the Bayt.com ‘Innovation in the MENA Workplace’ poll). Motivate individuals or teams who come up with innovative ideas through an awards scheme, for example.
10. Act on ideas
Remember, innovation is only worthwhile if it results in action. Provide the time and resources to develop and implement those ideas worth acting upon. Failure to do so not only means your firm will fail to benefit from innovation, but flow of ideas may well dry up if employees feel the process is pointless.
Suhail Al-Masri is the VP of Sales at Bayt.com, the Middle East’s leading job site. Suhail has more than 20 years of experience in sales leadership, consultative sales, account management, marketing management, and operations management. His mission at Bayt.com goes in line with the company’s mission to empower people with the tools and knowledge to build their lifestyles of choice.