Smart and Effective Way to Encourage Employee Innovation

61% of the respondents in a survey by PwC’s innovation benchmark revealed their inclination towards innovation at the workplace. This clearly indicates the importance of innovation for employees.

But have you ever wondered how is employee innovation a progressive step towards your business development? 

Well, there are many perks of integrating employee innovation at your workspace other than increased staff retention and profitability. This involves supporting the latest technological innovations, staff efficiency improvement and changing the way to support business via the employee innovation program. Many organizations also carry out various activities to encourage innovation in the workspace and create an excellent environment. Some of these strategies to increase Employee Innovation are - 

Bring in employee diversity: 

The first step towards innovation is creating a diverse working environment. Your hiring approach needs to be more selective and unique if you wish to have innovation and creativity at work. This can be accomplished by hiring employees from different backgrounds, cultures and ideology. 

When both differently minded people meet, they tend to see the negative as well as positive sides of each other and improve their performance cordially. This will produce a different set of ideas, varied problem-solving approaches and a diverse atmosphere. 

Reward Employees:

Materialistic motivation is one way to enhance an employees performance and boost his morale. As a part of an employee innovation program, you can reward your employees with suitable accolades like promotions, monthly bonus, a dignitary title like Employee of the week, month and so on. 

When the employees realize the need for this reward and honour, they will try to up their game and be better than anyone else in the room. 

Workshops:

Workshops and training have become an integral part of an annual employee curriculum. Participating in regular workshops would pave the way towards creative thinking for innovation. They can be conducted on various topics to introduce many fun activities during the two or three-hour workshop. 

Critical Thinking:

Critical thinking skills are highly important in any kind of field or profession. It improves an individual's ability to solve problems quickly and gives them a chance to overcome the problems they face creatively. The tougher challenges they face under regulated pressure, the more is their potential to think out of the box. 

Hire More Intrapreneurs:

Intrapreneurs are the employees in a workspace whose primary function is to create any work idea more innovative and creative. Known for their creative skills and out of the box tendencies, they come with some of the best and unique ideas one could ever imagine. 

If you want your business to be involved in innovation and creativity at work, you must have an eye for the employees with innovative skills and unique approached. 

Regular Meetings:

Keep having regular meetings with your employees and remind them about their projects and what you expect from them. You should talk openly about various ideas perceived by you as well as others. This will encourage creative thinking for innovation and motivate your employees to produce more and more ideas for your business in a more productive and unique way.

All of these factors tend to encourage innovative ideas and methodology to make your business successful and competitive. But even thinking for such out of box strategies in itself is an exercise and a creative show. 

To boost such creative thinking, educational institutions play a crucial role. MIT ID is one such leading name for Innovation courses that strives for the holistic development of the aspirants to produce potential youth having a vision.