Innovation is defined as a “new idea, device, or method”. While innovations bear differences across industries, they all share common themes around divergence from the norm, advancements, efficiencies, or new ways of accomplishing a task. While innovations often result in new or refined services, technologies, or products, it is driven by human curiosity, resilience, and a desire to evolve and do better.
Product-related innovations can range from Lego announcing that their famous bricks will be produced from biodegradable materials to waterproof cell phones. Process innovations may involve changes to assembly lines and robots to increase speed, efficiency, and accuracy. Organizational innovations can range from moving to a four-day work week, enabling a hybrid home/office work culture (something that has of course become the norm during the coronavirus pandemic), and using data to listen to employees and customers.
All of these originate with a desire for change, a human quest to do things differently – whether that is to align more closely to safeguarding our planet, increasing employee satisfaction and productivity, or giving people the ability to record videos underwater, innovation starts and ends with people.
At the organizational level, innovation generally begins with a desire to eliminate a problem, enhance experiences or capabilities, increase revenue, or decrease cost. This may entail IT changes to enable employees to access their files & data while outside the office, the implementation of self-service systems that help employees get their jobs done faster, or other changes that address a specific need. Regardless of the change, organizations need to have a sound transformation plan in place in order for “innovation” to be successful. If employees don’t adapt to changes because the system is burdensome or they haven’t been trained adequately, the investment and desire for improvement may be in vain.
Organizations are constantly tasked with changing business and human environments, which continually drives business transformation. Process, technology, culture, change management and employee skills are at the center of this transformation. Process and technology changes require adjustments to how employees engage with their work. In fact, if employees are unable to adapt to these changes, an organization will not be able to capitalize on it. This is why HR should be engaged with, and help drive business transformation.
The challenge for most organizations is not a shortage of transformation projects, but rather a lack of resources, time, and dollars. This is especially true for HR, which is often regarded as a cost center as opposed to a strong business partner. If this sounds familiar, there are things you can do to put your team into an advisor role. The importance is to identify a business problem (even a small one) that you can help provide a solution for without a significant investment. This generally involves an innovation related to people: Can your reporting team learn how to leverage existing technology more effectively so that you can provide more timely reports, even if investment in Tableau or PowerBI may not be in the cards right now? Have you recently conducted a report inventory designed to map reports to organizational goals to ensure that the reporting team is spending their efforts in a way that is meaningful to the overall organization?
The goal is to identify a problem that HR can solve by pushing current technology and investing in up or re-skilling existing resources and proving HR to be a trusted partner whose insight and expertise can move the business forward. Once this is done on a smaller scale it becomes easier for HR to justify future investments needed for continued innovation.
While technology advancements are necessary for innovation, organizations and HR teams have a lot of untapped potential for innovation with existing technology and skill sets. The goal of this blog is not to focus on innovation purely based on new technologies, but to discuss innovative ways to leverage previous and existing investment to advance. This is especially crucial during times where budgetary constraints may keep organizations from making certain investments in earnest.
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