Report extract: HR's role in enabling innovation

Katy Ring

Report extract: HR’s role in enabling innovation

By Katy Ring

This extract draws on K2 Advisory’s research entitled: “The CIO’s role in enabling innovation” and provides a snapshot of what training to support innovation is happening in the UK as well as indicating that it is an area positioned to grow.

Key messages from the report:

K2’s research shows that 81% of organisations consider innovation to be a key part of their value proposition and/or mission statement, yet only 36% of these provide training on innovation. Many organisations believe innovation happens organically, and therefore does not require any training. We would argue that it is important to have a structure to your approach to ensure that you are able to generate and capture the best ideas. Training for staff around innovation is important, and separates organisations that are serious about innovation from those that are less committed.
Innovation training is a growing requirement: of those organisations that do provide innovation training it is a relatively established training topic with a third doing so for more than three years. There of course remain many companies who are introducing it as a new training topic, with K2 research showing that within the last year 40% of organisations started staff training on innovation.
The majority of organisations that provide innovation training are pleased with the percieved success of the training programmes. For example, K2 research shows that 40% of organisations say that as a result of training, they have developed more collaborative ways for staff to work.

Overview
Many organisations that train staff on innovation do so on a regular basis. More than half are running training on either a monthly or a quarterly basis. This supports K2 Advisory’s view, which is that you can’t just ‘train and leave’. This is an ongoing process about redefining the way people generate and capture ideas, and then – importantly – implement those ideas. Particularly in organisations where the culture is not typically inducive to innovative approaches, regular training will be an important part of an overall programme. Those companies who opt for a one-off training session might get some pay-back in the short-term, but over a longer period of time, this kind of investment is a waste – as staff will leave/revert to previous behaviours.

K2 findings show that 6% of organisations provide innovation training as a “one-off exercise”.
Face-to-face sessions, in groups both large and small, is the most popular method of training, with 60% of organisations opting for this method – but smaller groups are the favoured approach.

While this can be an effective way to train people, it should not set the tone for how staff should collaborate on a continuous basis. There are examples of organisations that attribute the success of their innovation programmes to the fact that it has been rolled out across the entire organisation. Indeed, K2 would argue that staff ‘on the front line’ are actually the ones that are best placed to make suggestions for improvements to processes or highlight the need for new products.

K2 research shows that in 52% of organisations, all staff are being trained around the topic of innovation.
However, a fifth of organisations still focus training on management teams.
For specific campaigns around innovation (for example, your organisation might be trying to identify how a specific product range might be expanded), it can make sense to focus training or workshop sessions on specific business functions. Our word of caution is to not exclude staff simply because they are not senior.

Outcome of training

Currently, those organisations that provide training for staff on innovation show little sign of stopping or reducing training.
Only 6% are looking to reduce the amount of training they provide.
Furthermore, in a significant number of organisations training programmes are being expanded. For example, 21% intend to extend the training to more staff, while 33% intend to provide more specific training.
A likely reason for this expansion will be due to the perceived success of the training programmes. K2 research shows that 40% of organisations say that as a result of training, they have developed more collaborative ways for staff to work.
Meanwhile, 46% say they have been better able to capture and act upon ideas generated by staff.