Innovation Leaders engaging with Human Resources
Although usually not the primary reason to start an innovation program in a corporation, there can be significant value of this kind of program for employee development. A few examples of the benefits I observed:
Employee engagement
- Innovators. I have seen employees from all across the corporation come up with great ideas and passionately pursuing them. These colleagues emerged from Marketing, Sales, IT, Manufacturing, Medical Affairs, Finance, … A sales representative in India won a global innovation award for his idea to address the high cost of inviting global opinion leaders to local events in India (the solution was based on hologram technology). The year later he submitted 10 ideas for that year’s challenge!
- Innovation Leaders. An Innovation Leader in Venezuela (this was before the political crisis) created an innovation stimulating climate in the Venezuelan organization. She did this on top of her regular marketing role. Her passion and the impact of the program made her an inspiration for innovation leaders in the other LA countries.
- Exposure. Pursuing innovation/innovative initiatives provided innovators and innovation leaders with high visibility to senior management, something that is rare in most employee’s careers.
Employee development
- Education. Innovation Challenges were an effective way to communicate to the whole organization what our priority problems were. This “education” helped employees across all divisions to better understand the company and rallied them to solve those priority issues.
- Teamwork. Pursuing innovations provided employees the opportunity to develop teamwork skills and to learn about other parts of the organization. For example, marketing and IT worked together to solve business challenges with tech solutions.
- Acumen. Taking innovations through the innovation framework familiarized the innovator with how the corporation works, e.g. how to engage critical colleagues, like those in legal/compliance.
Employee retention
- Seasoned employees. Experienced employees that pursued an innovative idea, build on their expertise and “rejuvenated” themselves: they renewed their passion, redeveloped a sense of purpose, broke established habits.
- Young employees. In some regions, e.g. Asia, employee turnover was a typical problem for corporations. Pursuing innovative ideas provided those employees with continued ways to develop new skills for personal development. They stayed with the company that provided these opportunities. A regional leadership team created and personally sponsored an innovation competition for young employees (high potential, less than 3 years with the company). Teams of 4 employees from each country competed in a regional hackathon format and also executed their innovative experiments.
- Talented employees. A corporate HR program aimed to accelerate the general management capabilities of promising employees and was sponsored by the CEO. One part of the program was an “action learning project” in small teams. This was often an innovation related project. These employees were able to create global networks and to engage with leaders in different parts of the company due to the global and cross-functional nature of innovation projects. They also experienced multiple critical corporate processes, like project management, collaboration within different cultures, securing buy in for developed plans and programs, following SOPs and ensuring legal approvals.
The above approaches created a win-win. A win for HR: innovation supported people development goals for the corporation. A win for innovation: pockets of passionate employees across the organization became advocates for innovation and created a climate that stimulated more innovation.
As Sir Richard Branson said:
“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t have to.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I engaged with HR colleagues to identify innovation related opportunities that were aligned with HR objectives.
More about this topic: “Innovation: A Strategic HR Imperative” by Michael Stanleigh.
Any thoughts you like to share on the above?
Click here for more of my blogs on innovation within corporations: Wim Vandenhouweele