Innovation is what keeps a business driving forward, determining whether it will thrive, or fall by the side-lines. Without innovation, your business cannot continue to be a leader in its field. Can you really afford for that to happen? Fostering a culture of innovation in the workplace has a significant impact on the success of a business. For instance, an engaged employee is an innovative one. Studies show that highly engaged employees show up to 21% greater profitability than their competitors.
Fostering, and nurturing, a culture of innovation can be challenging, but immensely rewarding. Here are a few steps your business can take to engage your employees and turn your business into an innovation powerhouse.
Get People Talking
Did you know that around 30% of US workers don’t feel engaged at work? This means you need to find a way to get your employees excited and reward them for their contributions.
Getting them talking is the first place to start. Encouraging employees to share their own creativity and ideas helps them feel valued and satisfied in their careers. Shared ideas and perspectives can impact your business in many ways. This includes solving problems, streamlining existing operations, and boosting productivity, to name a few.
Inspire Collective Intelligence
People working together to gather ideas, perspectives and thoughts is known as collective intelligence. Helen Keller once said, ‘Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much’. This quote very much applies to collective intelligence. With collective intelligence in the workplace, you create a shared mind that cannot be matched by one person alone.
The quantity of ideas increases the quality of the things your business does. With a collective intelligence made up of people from different backgrounds and different perspectives, you improve your chances of creating something unique in your industry.
‘Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much’ – Helen Keller
Finding the Right Answers
Encouraging collective intelligence in the workplace will lead to a culture of innovation, and this starts with your employees having a place to express their voices. It’s highly likely that every employee has an idea – big or small – about the business and how it runs, but they don’t have a place to put them forward.
Rather than just providing a suggestion box, employees need a space they can access remotely and interact with their own and other ideas. This is a place that can be used to generate ideas for new products and services, address pain points for customers, and refine your existing offerings. Internally, you can use the ideas generated by your team to improve organizational processes, solve existing problems within the business, and boost overall productivity.
Creating a culture of innovation in the workplace can lead your business to greater success than ever before. An innovative workplace that uses collective intelligence can become true trailblazers in their field, and a business that will have a lasting impact on the industry.
