How to encourage innovation across your workforce

For many companies, creating a culture of innovation will be crucial to your chances of achieving success.

You may be attempting to launch new innovative products; your business might be a market disruptor itself; or you could be trying to respond to a new market entrant who is currently disrupting your industry sector.

Surveys show that many firms are preventing innovation across their workforce due to their workers being overrun with daily tasks, having a shortage of new ideas and experiencing too much bureaucracy.

This article suggests ways in which the finance leader and your management team can encourage innovation across your workforce.

Create a relaxed culture

Innovation starts with ideas.  You will need to create a relaxed culture to encourage your teams to develop and contribute their ideas to you.

Many ideas will be non-starters and some may even be ridiculous, however you should welcome all ideas and avoid alienating people if one of their ideas is not particularly well thought-out.

You must also be prepared to accept the future failure of innovative ideas that you select to take forward, in order to encourage others to thrive.

Embrace and support good ideas

Once you have developed an innovative culture, you will most likely receive a huge number of ideas.  Create forums for your teams to contribute ideas, such as annual innovation competitions, and profile the best entries.

You will need to follow through with strong ideas to create passion and to give them a chance to succeed.  Set aside the necessary funds and be prepared to provide workforce flexibility to show that you are serious about embracing innovation.  

Ensure unsuccessful ideas fail quickly

Many good ideas will end up failing, in line with the majority of startup companies.  It is important to implement mechanisms to fail quickly and to avoid suffering unnecessary financial consequences and workforce distractions.

These mechanisms may include:

• Requiring key metrics to be achieved by a specific date in order to continue;
• Providing a fixed sum of money to finance development activities; and
• Reviewing the ongoing feasibility of the project at various timeframes.

Recruit to create an innovative culture

Your management team and influential workers will have a big impact on your actual business culture.

Workers fit into different personality types, for example, their combination of one of each of the following four characteristics:

1. Introversion/Extraversion;
2. Sensing/Intuition;
3. Thinking/Feeling; and
4. Judgement/Perception.

Companies need to hire the right combination of people to encourage and support your desired innovative culture.  Think carefully about the people that you hire into your business and incorporate personality assessments, or character references, into your senior recruitment process where applicable.

Build a diverse workforce

You are unlikely to generate a wide range of innovative ideas if all of your workforce have exactly the same background and experience.

Recruit a diverse workforce who can leverage from a variety of life experience, previous roles and responsibilities.  People exposed to different cultures, role models and capability groups may provide a range of perspectives, which can result in mixed approaches to problem-solving.

Maintain work-life balances

Working long hours can have a big impact on the energy and creativity within your teams.  Possessing a strong work-life balance provides people with more downtime and can increase their levels of excitement towards a career, opening up their minds to creative thinking.

Workplaces are full of routines and disruptions that make it very hard to dedicate proper time towards brainstorming.  Many companies choose to break up a routine during brainstorming sessions, for example by organising office away days or team activities.

Summary

Encouraging innovation across your workforce is a crucial success factor for many entrepreneurial business. Companies should recruit the right combination of people into your workforce, to create your desired culture.

Implement brainstorming initiatives and embrace new ideas.  Provide the necessary infrastructure to support the best ideas through their development stages.  

Recognize that some ideas will fail, whilst others may flourish into new business divisions