Many businesses declare innovation is a key goal. Then they actually set about ‘innovating’. Some months later, not much has happened, priorities change or the appetite wanes – as no one is seeing much or any return.
The challenge therefore, is how to implement and achieve sustainable innovation. Wazoku’s EveryDay Innovation Report shows that more than half (52%) of employees believe that although their organisation is full of people with great ideas, there is no established process for ideas to be shared and filtered. This is where HR comes in.
In many organisations, the HR department has the main, coordinating role to play in answering the innovation question. HR is in the best position to engage all stakeholders and ensure a sustained flow of ideas that can be prioritised and rolled out and measured.
So what key steps do HR leaders need to take to achieve an innovation culture in their organisation?
Becoming an innovative organisation involves process, project management, more process, resource, time, space, experiment and iteration. By its very definition, it cannot be successful if it is viewed in isolation, constrained into a single business function or silo.
But before you start, you must ask why you want to innovate and what is it you want to achieve through your innovation. Once this has been completed, a vision statement around these objectives can be shared, so everyone in the organisation is working toward a common goal.
The 4 steps HR must take:
1. Assess your innovation readiness
To get started, it is important to understand your organisation’s ‘innovation readiness.’ This is achieved by measuring capabilities against five pillars of innovation: Strategy, Leadership, Management, Culture and Process & Tools.
To obtain an accurate understanding, it’s essential to include a cross section of stakeholders – board members, leaders, managers, employees and even external partners and suppliers.
In conducting the assessment, HR needs to ask the hard questions. Does the organisation demonstrate sharp degrees of difference in maturity across the five different pillars? Are stakeholders across the business aligned or is there great disparity in viewpoint by role, job function or geographic region? Furthermore, are there isolated pockets of innovation happening across the organisation, without being aligned with the overall business?
2. Get the ball rolling
The next stage is to look for quick wins. It’s important to show some early successes and communicate them to key stakeholders and the wider organisation. This is your opportunity to Inform, engage and get advocates for the programme.
Within this, you should also:
- Consider the innovation language in the organisation.
- Don’t focus just on the areas you score the lowest on, but also look at areas where there is a broad range in the results.
- Look at the tools used to drive and deliver innovation.
One solution to bring the conversation to the organisation as a whole is to create a platform through which leadership can share company goals and stakeholders can submit viewpoints and ideas. This is something employees already have an appetite for, as Wazoku found that 87% of employees see the concept of an “idea sharing platform” as a very useful way to improve innovation in their company.
3. Try & test
This stage is the time to put planning, learning, data and design thinking into practice. Don’t take on too much. Measure the impact of what is being implemented and control the process as it evolves.
In this phase it is important to try, fail, pivot, learn and iterate. Throughout this process measure and understand whether it has a positive impact.
4. Measure success
How do HR professionals help an organisation measure its innovation programme? The solution is to engage key stakeholders from across the business to define a consistent set of metrics to evaluate what is working well and what needs to be altered.
Typically an organisation must measure behavioural changes and specific outcomes (i.e. costs saved or new revenue generated). However the metrics chosen will vary and be unique to each organisation. The key is for everyone in the organisation to know what is being measured before the process starts.
As HR experts use these elements on a daily basis, it is logical for them to have a central role in creating the innovation culture.
An example of a company that has been able to address strategic challenges by building a repeatable and sustainable innovation programme is Abellio Greater Anglia. Its online idea management platform, The Spark, allows all stakeholders to submit ideas to reach its vision of improving customer experience. Just 12 months into the project, 40% of Abellio’s invited employees have engaged with the idea management platform. With two concepts already being piloted, significant business improvements aren’t far off.
Working towards and achieving a culture of innovation is a long term commitment, not a one-time event. It requires resources, cultural fit and skills from across the business. If sustainable processes are implemented, the rewards can lead to competitive advantage, truly engaged stakeholders and enhanced customer loyalty. By using the five pillars of innovation, HR can help the business embark on the iterative journey to embed it into the daily operations of the organisation.
