Engaged employees come up with more innovative ideas, more often. And even though this makes sense, it's also backed up by Gallup with years of research. And we all know how research is a catalyst for change.

But knowing this is one thing. Getting the ideas is another thing and having engaged employees is something else. But what is an engaged employee? Gallup classifies employees into three groups when talking about engagement.

Three types of employee

• Engaged - this type of employee works with passion and feels a profound connection to the organisation
• Not Engaged - this type of employee has checked out, they're sleepwalking through the day, putting in hours instead of energy or effort
• Actively Disengaged - simply put this type of employee is miserable in and at their job. They actively undermine coworkers and sabotage projects

And according to the 2017 State of the American Workplace report from Gallup, 70% of U.S. workers are not engaged. Now, we're not in America, but do you really think that number is very much different in Europe?

Driving engagement

And a little more logic follows. If you were to actively seek out ideas from your employees and implement the best or most viable, you'll improve engagement by showing that you are serious about your employees. And you can get away with doing it once, you really can. But imagine what happens when you have engaged employees and a culture of innovation.

If you ask for ideas (engage) and implement the best or most viable (shown that you have listened), your engagement levels increase.

Take that one step further; with engaged employees you get more innovative ideas, more often. And as the underlying goal of employee engagement is improved business outcomes, is it any coincidence that engaged organisations are 21% more profitable?

The need for formal innovation management

Now, we were always going to get to the part of the post that drummed home the need for innovation management, it's what we do, so here it comes: you can't run ideation workshops or events and put the ideas in a drawer only for them to be forgotten in three months. That's how employees become not engaged or worse, actively disengaged.

The graph below is from Gartner and it tells us that crowdsourcing is the most effective technology a CIO can adopt when it comes to building a digital platform.

In short, if you're serious about innovation and creating long term value, crowdsourcing is as an effective way to begin as possible. And if you want to realise that value, you need to do it properly and by that we mean building a formal innovation management program that doesn't mean ideas get left in a drawer.

And again, it's not just us saying that (look a little closer at the graph).

And then it's about scaling it

Contact us

So on that, if you're thinking about crowdsourcing or starting a formal innovation program, please get in contact. We're very passionate about what we do and we also really enjoy sharing. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you want to know more or how you can start working this way and we'll get back to you very soon.

Links

Insights From the 2016 Gartner CIO Agenda Report

2017 State of the American Workplace report from Gallup

Header photo credit: Matty Adame-Valencia