Employees Are Both Individuals and Team Members – Treat Them as Such for Maximum Innovation

When you treat your employees right, it creates a Maximum Innovation environment

A key message for employers all over the world is to treat each worker as an individual, while encouraging them to act like a team. Once you understand this, you will notice everything in your organization starts to work better, particularly if you also have a top idea management software option in place.

How Individuality Leads to Teams

It is said that when employees leave, it isn’t because of the company, but rather because of people. A study by Fierce also stated that 75% felt that being personally connected to their manager made them more likely to be satisfied with their job. What this means is that, if you treat employees like people, they are more likely to work harder for you. Treating them like people also means knowing their name, and not just their job title. A key way to achieve that is through innovation management software, where everybody, regardless of their job title, can participate on an equal footing.

Feedback

Through idea management and innovation software, you enable employees to talk about their feelings and their worries. Everything they say has to be taken into consideration, and you should feedback on that. In fact, 80% of people in the workforce today do not like performance reviews, preferring instant feedback. What an idea management platform does, is allow your employees to express opinions and you – and others – to provide feedback on that. This, in turn, leads to more ideas, and so on.

Recognition

A study in 2015 by Aon Hewitt also showed that:

  • 53% of Millennials appreciate it when managers say “thank you”.

  • 42% of Millennials look for public recognition.

PwC delved deeper into this, showing that 41% of these people want to be recognized monthly at least.

Recognition is all about acknowledging efforts publicly and face to face. It is also good to reward people for their efforts, particularly if they were good. However, you need to make sure that it is clear what the reward was for, and that the same reward will be offered to anyone else who performs equally well. When employees feel recognized, job satisfaction and retention increases. Plus, it gives people the confidence to be innovative and take initiative.

Again, idea management software is incredibly beneficial here. It is very easy to see who uses it the most, who has provided the most popular ideas, or who has provided the most ideas in general. You can even use the platform to provide recognition and say “thank you”.

When you start to treat your employees as people, as individuals, they will be more inclined to act as a team as well. That is because they will feel more part of the organization as a whole. Employees who feel recognized at their company are more engaged, and employees who are more engaged work harder and are far more productive. And all of this can be brought about through a simple innovation and idea management platform!