Creating and incentivizing innovative workforce

Is your office an innovative office?

In the next decade, whether it is or isn’t will determine whether you prosper or fail. 

Companies face the immense challenge of either covering the uncertain but increasing costs of climate change, or introducing new technology and processes to reduce their impact on rising temperatures. Digitization will provide more and better tools for improving quality and productivity. 

Executives will need to calculate how much and how soon they should embrace these new technologies. They will need teams that can rapidly assess what can be done, what the cost-benefits are, and how quickly one part of the organization can contribute to the other parts. We will all need innovative teams. 

Yet innovation is fast becoming another corporate fetish. You can’t just put the word innovation in front of another word- workforce- and magically create an innovative workforce. Getting there takes leadership and management. 

Last week, Martina Kneiflová of EY spurred a discussion with Agnieszka Pietrasik of Hays and Jaroslav Bělehrad of Y Soft on how to create innovate teams. 

Key takeaways?
Teams need to be more self aware of their strengths and weaknesses. They need to have a diverse set of skills and personalities. Incentives need to calibrated to encourage risk-taking within defined objectives. Failure that leads to success should not be punished or considered a career-killer, and might even be worth a bonus. Skillsets need constant updating as technology and knowledge grows. 

None of this something new under the sun. But all of it needs to be woven together in just the right proportions to ensure that your organization will emerge successfully from this high technological transitionary period.