Welcome to the employee engagement news roundup, your resource for news, blogs, research and insight into all things employee engagement. Tis the season to be jolly or in our case innovative as we focus on innovation and employee engagement over the festive period.
While we continue to shine a light on the great work being done by the Engage For Success Project Sub Groups why not peruse some of these great articles on the subject of innovation and employee engagement?
As ever, if you have something to share why not get in touch via twitter @Engage4success or email us at content@engageforsuccess.org?
Why Innovation begins with a ‘T’ (well, 7 ‘T’s actually) – Think
Sir Richard Branson recently argued in his blog that “innovation is the lifeblood of successful businesses”. And that if you aren’t innovating, you are actually going backwards.* Many people still labour under the illusion that the ability to think creatively and, thus, to innovate effectively, is confined to the brains of the organisation. Maybe this is the R&D division, or the Strategy team, or the Marketing group. But the reality is that we all have the capacity to be creative and that businesses need to cultivate working environments where creativity flows throughout the organisation like a perfect circulatory system. The desire to innovate and the capacity to think creatively becomes a central and consistent feature of ‘the way we all do things around here’.
Employee engagement and innovation – Adrian Swinscoe
In 2002, two young Australian graduates decided to set up their own software firm. A firm that would compete with some of the big names in enterprise software, companies like Microsoft and IBM. So they made a shrewd financial decision, they borrowed $10,000 on their credit cards and set up a company called Atlassian, after the Greek God Atlas who carried the world on his shoulders. Had I been around at the time I would have told them not to be so stupid and to go and get a proper job; however 10 years later Atlassian have over 220 staff; offices in Sydney, San Francisco and Amsterdam and a published revenues of $102 million. Not too shoddy.
Intrapreneurship: the key to unlocking employee engagement – Real Business
According to Gallup research, businesses now face 37 per cent lower absenteeism, 65 per cent lower turnover, 48 per cent fewer safety incidents and 22 per cent higher profitability. But we still haven’t been able to crack the code of employee engagement. Across the board, work just doesn’t seem as fulfilling and satisfying as we want it to be. I tend to paint a picture of a happy employee who creates real value for the organisation. Someone who loves what he/she is doing, who transforms ideas into tangible outcomes and radiates positive energy.
