We hear about the need for innovation almost everywhere we go in the corporate world.
So much so that the word “innovation” is on almost every list of overused corporate buzzwords.
Unfortunately, the overuse of the term, often without context or substance, takes away from the important role it plays in a healthy and growing organization.
Regardless of your thoughts on corporate vernacular, innovation is an important part of every function, including HR.
HR is – of course – no stranger to innovation.
In recent years, social, economic, and technological changes have challenged traditional ways of working and forced many HR functions to innovate.
Some innovations, such as hybrid work and digital workplaces, were born out of necessity during the pandemic, to enable organizations to continue operating during a time of intense uncertainty.
However, there are benefits to increased and sustained innovation within HR, and many business leaders indicate innovation is a major tactic for growth in the current uncertain macroenvironment.
Why is this?
Well, HR faces ongoing and important workforce issues – such as leveraging artificial intelligence and establishing digital workplaces. Both require HR leaders to generate new solutions and maintain productivity.
Unfortunately, HR leaders face several obstacles when it comes to innovation:
Just 41% of HR employees believe they have clear guidelines regarding the innovation ideas their organization is looking for.
Only 46% of HR employees say their organization offers them opportunities to get involved in the execution of new ideas.
Only 49% of HR employees indicate their organization has a clear process to follow when proposing ideas.
So how can these challenges be overcome?
I believe there are three key strategies that can help HR initiate and maintain innovation momentum:
When we think of innovation, we often spend much of our time “defining” what innovation means.
For instance, is it building a better solution for a pre-existing issue or is it commercializing an invention?
The reality is that it could be either of those things, but HR leaders should focus their efforts on communicating the value and benefits innovation brings rather than simply defining it.
Organizations that take the time to convey the value will see higher levels of innovation.
In a recent Gartner survey, 50% of organizations with high levels of innovation reported that they communicate the potential benefits of innovation to stakeholders.
Only 16% of organizations with low levels of innovation reported the same thing.
It’s clear that to generate buy-in from employees, CHROs must communicate the value that innovation will bring to HR employees’ workflows.
For example, implementing automation into HR functions allows HRBPs to reduce the amount of time spent on transactional work so they can focus on more strategic work.
In addition to explaining the value innovation will bring, CHROs must ensure innovation is aligned to the function’s strategy and metrics for success.
In many functions, business goals may not be well-articulated or socialized, making it more difficult for employees and leaders to know how innovation connects to business outcomes.
CHROs should work with peers from strategy, innovation teams, and other relevant functions to identify (and potentially influence) the function’s business goals.
Gartner has identified seven critical dimensions across the company level and the program/initiative level to help HR determine the focus of innovation initiatives – see below:
The alternatives along each dimension should not be viewed as mutually exclusive but as a set of options from which to formulate an appropriate innovation scope.
These dimensions allow HR to identify the scope and goal of innovation.
By defining where the organization will focus its effort, employees can clearly understand how innovation will drive value in their workflows.
Many innovation strategies depend on a designated team with a sole focus on innovating for an organization.
But by concentrating innovation to only one team (instead of leveraging expertise across different functions), organizations create innovation silos that limit its potential impact.
Notably, Gartner found that 47% of global innovation leaders believe silos make collaboration difficult and are among the top barriers to innovation success.
For HR to continue to respond to new organizational challenges, it cannot rely solely on its functional expertise.
Instead, it must seek ways to directly incorporate new skills, expertise, and approaches to innovation into the function.
Typically, organizations up-skill staff through rotational or structured training programs, but these approaches are limited and only allow employees to develop select skills from other functions and resolve isolated problems to move projects forward.
By embedding colleagues from other functions with different skillsets and knowledge into the HR function (such as IT employees with expertise in agile methodologies, as one automotive organization did), organizations can facilitate ongoing opportunities for HR staff to learn from their cross-functional peers with innovation expertise and infuse new methods and approaches to innovation across HR.
Innovation is inherently risky and within business functions, the appetite for innovation risk is low.
According to Gartner only 16% of innovation leaders indicate their organizations accept a high level of risk with innovation.
Additionally, only 28% of HR employees agree that their HR function encourages them to take risks, even if they result in failure.
Risk aversion, within and outside of HR, is a major obstacle to innovation.
To reduce innovation risk, organizations must establish structured innovation processes.
While this sounds counterintuitive, without structure organizations risk investing in innovation initiatives that are not aligned to their HR or business needs.
Unbounded innovation is not simply work without constraints; it also lacks a clear direction.
As such, HR can create clear processes or criteria for innovation to help its employees and leaders engage in targeted experimentation that also supports functional and organizational needs.
Regardless of how many times the word innovation is written in a press release or sprinkled across marketing collateral about a company, true innovation is the result of CHROs defining innovation’s benefits and value to employees, embedding innovation networks across functions, and establishing structured innovation processes.
True innovation is fostered from within, and these three strategies will help HR lead the way.
