Encouraging your employees to innovate pushes your company forward in leaps and bounds. But they need help in reaching your company’s goals.
No matter what types of innovation you want to accomplish, each requires a similar approach. Whether you’re focusing on corporate innovating (mostly with group projects) or business innovating (enhancing the procedures of a company), your employees need support.
You need to urge your workforce into an innovative mindset. Do you want to make your business more competitive and productive?
Here are a few ways of doing so.
1. Motivate Your Employees
Let your staff know why innovation is needed. Without new discoveries, you are not competitive, and your company loses its edge. Your employees are necessary for this process.
So let them know! Inform them about their significance in the company’s growth, and tell them they need to get competitive.
2. Make Time for Brainstorming
If your employees are going to get their A-game ‘on’, you need to provide a way for them to do just that. A team’s day out for creative thinking is one way to do that.
Not only are social events and brainstorming opportunities good for innovative thinking, but times of solitude and reflection are just as important.
3. Innovative Design
Look at who your employees are and draft a seating arrangement that encourages the exchange of ideas. Create informal, relaxed areas where your employees feel comfortable sharing.
In conjunction with this, provide separate, private places where they can retreat to think. Utilize software to accomplish the mundane jobs that give everyone a headache.
This will free up your employees so that they can spend their time thinking about more significant company issues and ways of solving them. Also, use innovation management software to help in collaboration and problem-solving.
4. Employee Empowerment
You hired specialized employees for the express purpose of making sure that they will work to the best of their ability for your company’s growth. So, let your employees shine and do their jobs.
If you are going to allow your staff to do their jobs the way they know how to, there can’t be a strict hierarchy. Yes, a structure should still be maintained within your company, but your employees must feel comfortable enough to voice their opinions and inspirations in the first place.
Don’t shoot them down for “speaking out of turn.”
5. Look for Inspiration
Encourage your employees to look for new ideas everywhere. Check out what the competition is up to and see how you can improve on it.
Let employees shadow each other or swap jobs temporarily. All this does is broaden their perspectives, allowing them to approach a problem from multiple directions.
6. Be Very Clear
Employees need to know your expectations and goals. They need to know what the end-goal is and that it is achievable.
Nothing is less attainable than a vague target. Constant and clear communication is necessary to encourage your employees.
7. Easy Communication
Allowing employees to collaborate and talk is helpful, but creating an online platform where they can share ideas wherever they are is even better.
They can continue brainstorming in settings besides work, further encouraging them to think outside of the box. Also, this constant communication ensures that all opinions will be heard.
8. Tolerance
Listen to everyone’s thoughts, and don’t be critical of mistakes. Making mistakes is the norm in an innovative environment.
That’s how we learn, grow, and create.
Risk-taking is a part of finding new and better improvements.
9. Positive Response
Always reward creativity and act on creative concepts. While bonuses for bright ideas are good and well, there isn’t much that is more discouraging than an employer who says a plan is great but never does anything about it.
Actions speak louder than words, so let them.
Take a risk and act on those bright ideas.
In Conclusion
Innovation starts at the root level. So, utilize each employee’s skill sets and empower them to get the work done.
An employer can have brilliant ideas, but if he is the only one who has any inspiration, nothing will happen.
For your company to move forward, you have to work as a team.
Interesting related article: “What is Motivation?“