30th Jan 2023
Can Engagement Affect Innovation?
Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report states that 60% of people are emotionally detached at work and 19% of them are just plain miserable. That doesn’t sound all that good, does it? You might ask, what do they mean by miserable? Well, Gallup defines miserable as “actively disengaged” and they define emotionally detached as just “not engaged.”
So that means 79% of people are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work. Ugh.
If you are in an administration role or a part of an IP team, you may think that disengaged workers doesn’t have anything to do with you. You may be correct unless you are the one tasked with increasing disclosures or the improving quality of disclosures. If this is you, it has everything to do with you.
Your employees’ engagement plays a significant factor in your company's innovational and financial success. Gallup reports that “businesses with engaged workers have 23% higher profit compared to businesses with “miserable” workers.” Engaged employees put in that extra effort. They don’t waste time on lower value tasks since they are more involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. In addition, businesses with engaged employees see much lower absenteeism and turnover. Gallup puts it best “They are psychological owners,” they “drive performance and innovation, and move the organization forward.”
Just think about what kind of impact companies can have when their R&D group is fully engaged, when individuals are contributing to “new and useful inventions” --when the impact of a disclosure or patent assigned to your company has potential for additional profits. This is where companies find their edge and stand out from competition. One simple and cost-effective way to improve engagement is to create a positive culture of innovation.
A key element to any positive culture is recognition. Studies show that recognizing achievements has benefits on attitudes, behaviors, job satisfaction, work performance and productivity. The simple act of recognizing granted patents and innovational milestones connects the achievement to organization’s goals thus creating a deeper loyalty to the organization and in turn a stronger urge to act and perform in ways that benefit the organization.
Each time an inventor receives a tangible gift, such as a plaque or award, it gives opportunity for the contribution to be remembered and reinforced. And this is what starts to shape your culture of innovation. What gets recognized, gets repeated. The innovative action is more likely to get repeated by the person who is recognized, of course. But, more importantly, innovational efforts are also more likely to be repeated by those who observe the recognition.
Want to start improving your culture of innovation? The first step is recognizing those engaged inventors who are already contributing to it, and we can make that super easy. Give Patent Awards a call to get inventor recognition started today. 1-800-707-0011