We love using Post-it Notes at our live events as a way to understand the issues that participants are thinking about and working on.
At our Los Angeles Field Study in December, one participant started a discussion about incentives — how can you build systems that reward and recognize people for contributing to innovation efforts?
So we invited the other participants to use Post-Its to share the sort of incentives they offer — or are planning to offer — to encourage employees and leaders throughout the organization to dedicate their time and energy to innovation. Some very good ones at the end…
- Attach innovation as a KPI to change/incent behavior and actions.
- Discretionary small spot incentive [money] for innovative ideas.
- Tie incentives to annual review.
- Position it as a benefit to be selected to work on innovation team.
- Create awards, like an “Employee choice for innovator of the year” (like the People’s Choice Awards).
- Institute innovation as a personal development goal for employees. Make it part of job descriptions and expectations as soon as people start at your company.
- Make innovation aspirational; let associates take a role in a mentor-supported opportunity to launch your own idea.
- Career advancement opportunities. Exposure to senior leaders. HR performance incentives. Career development and education.
- Outstanding concepts are rewarded with one month of private use of a company-owned Tesla. Some cases merit a a tropical vacation benefit or cash award.
- We would like to see promising employee ideas…rewarded with a temporary relocation to the innovation lab to prototype the idea.
- Give employees access to senior leadership when innovative ideas are developed.
- After a competition for ideas, winner is given three-month sabbatical to work on project with internal resources and support.
- Ask employees for their learning desires and then help them achieve them during projects.
- Early stakeholder involvement in “sexy” front-end meetings and brainstorms.
- Offer incentives for certain roles when they take innovation courses.
- Money. Time with global leadership. Rotation onto an innovation team.
- In our annual Tech Project Awards, we added a new category for innovation projects, with a special exception that it doesn’t have to be fully-operational t be recognized.
- Empowerment: give money and time to try ideas with minimal approval to get started. Just try!
- If you come up with an innovative idea, you get to work on it, without adding to your existing workload.
- Skin in the game.
- Make it real, not a “side hustle.”
- Recognize people as smart and creative.
- Money for patents.
- Awards banquet. Patent plaques. Monetary rewards.
- A storyboard contest to get employees to visualize new customer journeys.
- Incorporate [innovation activity] into existing bonus structure, and have a set participation goal for each employee.
- Vacation days. A trip to a destination of the employee’s choice. Awards and badges. Adoption.
- Education and training stipends for employees.
- Simply listening to employees and sharing their ideas publicly.
- Review the project and acknowledge the viability with the employee. Recognize the employee. Fund the project. Incentives (cash/stock) for ideas that generate improvement, whether cost savings or revenue.
- The work itself, within a creative environment and with a creative team.
