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Leveraging employees' potential (View Comments)
A correspondent
Posted On Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 04:19:03 PM
It is a well known fact that innovation is the key to success for any organisation and to win an edge over the rest in today’s competitive corporate scenario, one has to constantly innovate, right? In an endeavour to achieve just that, several organisations are undertaking initiatives to leverage their employees’ potential to nurture a culture of innovation…
Today, organisations believe in the power of innovation and the need for innovative ideas to remain successful in the cut-throat competitive business world. And who else can be better innovators than the employees themselves?
Most firms are taking drastic steps towards providing the right platform for employees to innovate. “Logica runs a day long idea marathon event - ‘Ideathon’ which provides a platform for employees to ideate, develop and shape innovative ideas. It provides an environment where ideators are encouraged and guided by experts to arrive at real possibilities by the end of the day. Through Ideathon, employees can contribute ideas that bring innovation in products, services and processes. The employees are guided by experts to help them ideate along five published themes, in order to help arrive at tangible ideas. These five themes were - Connected World, Low Carbon Economy, Health and Well-Being, Mobile Telephony and Personal Mobility. The event had an overwhelming success with more than 700 ideas being clocked with active participation, across all offices of Logica India. The phenomenal success has led us to take this initiative globally to other countries we operate in as well,” explains GBS Bindra, global innovation director, Logica.
QA InfoTech conducts ‘Saturday Forum’, a platform where employees can present new ideas, findings and process improvements, which then leads to a brainstorming session with fellow colleagues. “Usually, our Saturday Forum leads to a group of our employees forming their team to further refine and develop the ideas presented. Employees who make contributions to innovations are recognised with a certificate of appreciation. Also, employees contributing significantly in the area of research and development are allowed to pursue a separate career wherein they could work on new ideas in a dedicated manner,” says Mukesh Sharma, founder & CEO QA InfoTech.
“To encourage innovating thinking and ideas, Tesco HSC had launched an internal campaign called ‘Get Curious’. Through the campaign, employees were urged to constantly ask themselves - what can we do better? How can we make the Tesco retail experience richer? Where can we implement the latest technology and processes to further streamline Tesco’s global retail functions? These are some of the questions,” explains Sudeesh Venkatesh, HR head, Tesco HSC. “We organise ‘Innovation Summits’ every year at HSC. It is a platform for our employees to showcase some great ideas and improve the way we do business and therefore, make processes better, simpler and cheaper. While the initial format was to churn out as many innovative ideas; to the business, it has now gone a step further and evolved to a problem-statement approach. Business heads, across functions list out the problem areas and employees come up with specific and holistic solutions. We have launched a ‘Global Innovations Portal’ where people, across geographies discuss, collaborate and form teams to come up with logical solutions,” adds Venkatesh.
According to experts, initiatives like these are a win-win approach for both, employees and the employer. It provides employees with the opportunity to think beyond their routine and come up with new ideas and solutions to various problems. For an employer, such an initiative fosters a culture of innovation within an organisation. “It is a great morale booster when an idea suggested by an employee is not only acknowledged, but also put to action,” says Bindra. Hence, organisations must provide a conducive work environment and an opportunity to nurture and turn ideas into a workable solution in order to promote innovation at the workplace.
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