HR supporting Innovations

Innovations are a key to building the competitive advantage. The recession pressures companies to create innovative solutions to cutting costs, enlarging the market share or designing new products for the new era. Innovations are possible just through open minds and committed employees. HR has to play the crucial role in enabling creativity and building the burning platform for the innovative storms in the organization.

Human Resources is not a usual place of the resistance. HR supports innovations. The only question is how innovations are supported. Does HR support innovations the right way? Look around you, how innovations are managed and introduced.

Innovation Awards are the usual solution in most companies. The awards are a fantastic idea, but they ignore the fact of working with innovations in organizations. The line management tries to protect the current status-quo. The line management fears of failure. The line management does not want to be responsible for the unsuccessful innovation idea.

Innovation Awards usually do not support the implementation of the innovative ideas in organizations. They just push employees to fight with the power of the resistant line management. Employees can introduce innovative ideas to their manager, but the manager will kill the idea in the beginning. The line management can introduce the Innovation Committee. The committee will not support any idea; it will ask for more details again and again. The real impact of the Innovation Award is minimized. Employees can be demotivated.

HR can support innovations more effective way than just introducing Innovation Award. Human Resources has to introduce the positive changes to the corporate culture. The line management is the real source of successfully implemented innovations.

HR has to support the corporate culture of the right to fail. Most innovations are not a success, but the successful innovations bring higher profits. The top management has to accept the right for the failure. The top management has to become the sponsor of innovations in the organization.

HR should design a specific program to support the change of the corporate culture. The successful innovations have to be celebrated, and the unsuccessful ones should be mentioned as outstanding examples of the effort to change. HR should design the training program for the line management to introduce the art of discovering innovation.

Do you do enough to support innovation? Do you help your company to become the innovative leader?