Innovation has become a benchmark for companies of all sizes and in all industries. However, innovation has to come from somewhere, and the genesis usually lies among employees. After all, the people who staff your business are nearly as familiar with the company as you are, and innovation often requires multiple minds to combine forces in pursuit of a worthy cause.
Unfortunately, business owners and managers don’t always encourage employee innovation. Instead, they inhibit it by remanding their staff to the status quo. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, maybe it’s time to loosen the leash on your employees a bit.
If you want employees to pursue innovation, you must make them care about your company’s goals and purpose. They need to adopt your goals as their own and become entrepreneurs in their own right. If people feel connected to their workplaces and colleagues, they will strive for greatness.
Additionally, your employees must feel empowered. Give them responsibilities that allow them to take control over their environments. Leave them enough space in the day to brainstorm and come up with fresh ideas. Following are a few ways to encourage employee ideas in the workplace.
Create an idea box
Many people aren’t comfortable voicing their ideas in front of others. They fear rejection, ridicule, or dismissal. To open the floodgates, create an idea box and put it in a discreet corner of your office building. Invite employees to drop ideas anonymously into the box.
If you decide an idea has merit, invite the employee to own up to his or her accomplishment. It’s OK if he or she doesn’t want to come forward, but when the threat of rejection is gone, many people will claim their ideas and agree to work toward making them into reality.
Some workspaces aren’t conducive to idea boxes. Instead, create an idea email address or a Google doc where anyone can type in ideas.
Avoid punishing failure
Employees often fear punishment when they try and fail. However, innovation doesn’t happen without failure because first tries rarely succeed. If you punish your workers for failing to meet their goals, they will set their sights lower and lower to ensure they don’t disappoint their boss again.
While you don’t want to encourage failure, per se, you can leave the door open for employees to try and fail. Whether they’re designing a new product, building a new system, or refining a process, give them enough autonomy to make mistakes and learn from them. True innovation sometimes comes from mistakes, so don’t fear failure.
Set up collaboration spaces
One person can prove innovative, but a group of people might get there faster. When multiple workers combine their skill sets, knowledge, and experience, they can often achieve admirable feats. Instead of sticking each employee in an office or cube, let workers get together in collaborative spaces. Allow them to hash out ideas, bounce thoughts off one another, and come up with new solutions.
You can even devote a specific day of the week for collaborative projects. Try to mix up groups so that everyone gets to work with everyone else. Alternatively, identify particular traits among your employees and match up groups to diversify them.
Hold contests
Contests can spawn creativity, but only when used sparingly. You don’t want to pit your employees against one another in a fight to the death, so avoid making competition part of the culture at your company. However, you can host brief competitions with small prizes to encourage employee innovation.
Nurture employee ideas
Once you’ve convinced your employees to voice their ideas and opinions, you must nurture those ideas and help bring them to fruition. Obviously, you can’t bring every idea to market, but you can select the ones with the most merit and involve the whole team in developing and improving it.
Open ideas to discussion
When someone presents an idea, hold a round-table discussion. Invite other workers to float their opinions and ideas, and appoint someone to take notes. Just make sure to control the conversation. Don’t let workers insult one another or each other’s ideas.
Praise innovative thinking
People respond well to praise. They like to know that their hard work remains appreciated, so don’t be stingy with compliments. If your employees demonstrate innovative thinking, you don’t have to give them raises or increase their bonuses. A kind word of praise might be even more gratifying.
Help employees feel safe
If employees constantly worry about getting fired, laid off, demoted, or disciplined, there’s no room for innovative thinking. Create a workplace culture that embraces every team member and helps them feel safe from the moment they arrive at work.
Ask open-ended questions
Sometimes employee ideas only come forth after a dose of inspiration. Open-ended questions can get the wheels turning, so to speak, and encourage workers to think about subjects differently. To start, try asking questions that start with some variation of the following:
- What would happen if we … ?
- How can we [solve problem] without [negative consequence]?
- How would you design this [product/process/service]?
- How do you feel about … ?
Let employees take turns answering the questions so you can get a feel for different strategies.
Shorten hours
Long work weeks can lead to frustrated, exhausted, and resentful employees who aren’t capable of innovative thinking. If you’re working your staff too hard, consider cutting back on the hours. If you can’t afford to do that, you might start a work-from-home program that allows employees to work certain days out of the office.
People tend to be more innovative when they’re rested and refreshed. Their minds become clearer and new ideas come more quickly.
Encourate work-life balance
In addition to shortening work hours, you might want to offer other benefits that help your employees achieve a healthy work-life balance. Free gym memberships, access to family resources, and free on-site childcare can all make a tremendous difference. To help staff members maintain their mental health, you could also offer access to therapy or counseling services.
Shift the focus
Employees at a company are often focused on their performance. However, innovation happens more rapidly when workers concentrate on the end user or benefactor of a creation. Shift the focus of team meetings and literature so that all employees are brainstorming and creating with the customer in mind. Constantly ask your team, “How will this benefit the public?”
Remove top-down management
It’s as old as the hills, but it doesn’t encourage employee innovation. Instead of creating a hierarchy of employees, from the C-suite to managers, to junior staff, give everyone equal weight. You will still have to assign responsibilities and job descriptions based on each team member’s experience and capabilities, but avoid creating a bosses-versus-workers mentality in the workplace.
Move people around
Coworkers often form bonds based on where they sit in the office. For instance, Emily might make friends with Dave because they work in cubicles opposite one another. If you want to bring more employee ideas to the forefront, move people around every few weeks. Let them get to know all the team members, so everyone feels comfortable and familiar during collaborative efforts.
Talk face-to-face
Email is impersonal, so try not to hold discussions with employees (especially those that involve feedback) via the internet. Instead, visit your employee in his or her cube or office and discuss the issue face-to-face. Give feedback with the intention of encouraging more innovation and creativity instead of talking about why an idea won’t work.
Set realistic expectations
Wanting your employees to have innovative ideas is wonderful, but don’t expect your staff to come up with the next big hit overnight. Let your employees know that you don’t have any specific expectations of them, and that you want them to explore possibilities without fear of failure.
Send employees away
Everyone needs to get away now and again. Consider sending your staff members to industry conferences and events, so they can network with other professionals and explore new ideas. These events often prove inspirational for professionals who want to turn their ideas into reality. Make it a voluntary assignment, but ensure that everyone has a chance to attend at least one event every year if they express interest.
Innovation takes time and creativity, and your employees likely have what it takes. Use the above tips to help them explore their own potential in a positive environment.