Inclusive Innovation

What is Workplace Innovation

A closer look at the definition of “innovation” at the organizational level shows an expectation of a successful outcome which takes the form of product, process, position or paradigm innovation. This results in gaining a competitive advantage or market share; hence, we often hear that organizations need to innovate to survive in today’s competitive environments. Nevertheless, focusing on innovation beyond economical or market gain directs us to view innovation as a social process, through which employees can improve the quality of their own work-life and add value through improved performance towards the organizational mission.

We’ll use the term Workplace Innovation to refer to Workplace Innovation led by employees (as it is used in Europe):

Workplace Innovation is the employee-led social process of mobilising new ideas to create better work (Carey, 2017). The twin goals of employee Workplace Innovation are to improve both the quality of work-life for employees and organizational performance for employers (Totterdill, 2020).

Workplace Innovation is defined as a social process which shapes work organisation and working life, combining their human, organisational and technological dimensions. Examples include participative job design, self-organised teams, continuous improvement, high involvement innovation and employee involvement in corporate decision making. Such interventions are highly participatory, integrating the knowledge, experience and creativity of management and employees at all levels of the organisation in a process of co-creation and co-design. Dortmund Brussels Position Paper on Workplace Innovation (Dhondt et al., 2012, p. 2).

Components of Workplace Innovation

Workplace Innovation Europe identifies the following four components of workplace innovation:

1. employee-driven innovation and improvement,
2. jobs, teams, and technology,
3. organizational structures, management, and procedures,
4. co-created leadership and employee voice.

When integrated together, these four components will lead to effective workplace innovation for organizational and employee value. This short animated video on workplace innovation (opens in a new tab) by Workplace Innovation Europe (EUWIN) explains how all of these fit together. (They label this integration as the “5th Element” of employee workplace innovation.)

The first component above, employee-driven innovation and improvement, is the focus of our modules. However, the capability you develop in this course can only create value when the organizational context encourages, supports and recognizes innovative employee behaviour.

Workplace Innovation is a Social Process

Workplace innovation is a continuous process and results in improved organizational performance and quality of life (EC, 2020). Rather than looking for a one-size-fits-all specification of ‘workplace innovation’, we are better served by thinking about workplace innovation as a process with key characteristics that will look different depending on context. We are calling this a ‘social process’ and as we will see below, the ‘social’ aspect is critical because workplace innovation is not about a ‘lone inventor’ sitting in a vacuum coming up with good ideas, but a process of refining, testing, and working those ideas with a collective and then putting those ideas to work.

Finally, it’s important to note that Workplace Innovation is a team sport: the image we might have of ‘the lone inventor’ is replaced by a team of people who apply their different skills, perspectives, and ways of thinking to create the better work result. In the process, the team typically creates new knowledge. That knowledge can be related to the context of our particular workplace or organisation; it can also have larger impacts when our team comes up with new ideas of broader applicability. Thus, a defining characteristic of workplace innovation as we are describing here is the direct involvement of the workforce in carrying out ­– and being responsible for – the process of mobilising new ideas to create better work. The collective is key!

Inclusive Innovation

The quotation above illustrates a key difference between general workplace innovation approaches and inclusive innovation. Innovation may be used to support corporate growth, but without concern for sustainability (environment, economy, and people) or JEDI. Inclusive innovation acknowledges that we must act intentionally for innovation to serve for good. In this course, we have explored different frameworks that support inclusivity, belonging, and flourishing, including the SDGs and JEDI principles. In this part of our exploration, we will work to understand how inclusive innovation supports us in achieving SDG and JEDI goals in real-world contexts. We also consider our role as innovation catalysts that initiate change creatively.

Inclusive Workplace Innovation in Canada

Inclusive workplace innovation has been extensively practiced and researched in Europe, and is newer to Canadian workplaces. Now, researchers and business leaders are working together to see how these practices can be used in Canada. In Canada, a key focus is ensuring that inclusive innovation is at the core of workplace innovation practices as they expand into organizations across Canada.

Key findings from research on workplace innovation in Canada include:

• Workplace innovation increases the performance of companies and employee well-being. When workplace innovation is encouraged, employees experience less stress, better mental health, increased job satisfaction. Companies benefit from improved employee retention.
• Workplace innovation leads to workplaces and teams becoming more diverse. As teams diversify, they are able to generate increasingly creative and beneficial innovation – fostering a cycle of increased inclusivity and success.
• Developing training programs for students and employees is an important part of supporting inclusive innovation.
• Innovation can support better JEDI practices; this is most likely to happen when equity-seeking groups are intentionally included in the inclusive innovation project.
• Inclusive innovation is vital to integrating the key goals of sustainability, that is, placing balanced attention on economic development while maintaining a focus on environmental and social concerns (Carey et al., 2023).

Four Levels of Workplace Innovation

Workplace innovation might seem complex. What you might not realize, however, is that you have already been a workplace innovator. The four levels of workplace innovation are:

1. Job crafting
2. Innovation adaptation
3. Design innovation
4. Intrapreneurship

Image alt-text: This image describes the four levels of inclusive innovation. At the beginning, there is less complexity and uncertainty. At later levels, team size and diversity increase, as does complexity and uncertainty. The four levels are: job crafting, innovation adaptation, design innovation, and intrapreneurship

Job Crafting

“Job Crafting” refers to the act of changing one’s job in a personalized way, with an intention of improving performance for the organization and quality of work life. Many organizations have already incorporated training and opportunities for Job Crafting into their personnel policies (although not always in ways that build and support broader workplace innovation capability).

In other words, Job Crafting can be defined as “taking proactive steps and actions to redesign what we do at work, essentially changing tasks, relationships, and perceptions of our jobs (Berg et al., 2007). The main premise is that we can stay in the same role, getting more meaning out of our jobs simply by changing what we do and the ‘whole point’ behind it.” (Moore, 2020)

Tims and Bakker’s (2010) definition of Job Crafting is “an employee-initiated approach which enables employees to shape their own work environment such that it fits their individual needs by adjusting the prevailing job demands and resources.” (p. 2)

The importance of Job Crafting for workplace innovation lies in the fact that “as employees craft their own jobs, they create scope to be more innovative at work (e.g., incorporating work tasks that will prompt innovative thoughts; crafting relationships with colleagues who can champion innovative ideas; focusing on skills that can be applied to a creative outlook on new products and processes in the organization; and adopting a view of one’s work role that will spur engagement in innovation for the organization, overall).” (Bindl et al., 2019, p. 609)

Watch this YouTube video for an introduction to Job Crafting. As depicted in the video there are various skills you can apply in Job Crafting: task crafting, relational crafting and cognitive crafting, and the additional approach of skill crafting (recently documented by Bindl et al. (2019)):

• task crafting takes place when an employee deviates from work tasks as formally outlined and makes changes to the scope, number or type of the task they are required to carry out
• relational crafting takes place when an employee makes changes to the way they interact with others
• cognitive crafting takes place when an employee rethinks their position; i.e., changes their perception of the job they carry out
• skill crafting takes place when an employee tries to broaden or improve their skill set so as to better their performance and prepare themselves for broader job responsibilities

Please note that job crafting can only take place where management is supportive of employee-led improvements and that job crafting should always be undertaken in dialogue with management.

Advanced Workplace Innovation

Innovation Adaptation: This refers to actively choosing to adopt an innovation that has been selected by your team or organization. For example, if your organization chooses to use a new AI tool, you would participate in innovation adaptation by learning how to use the tool in your daily work.

Design Innovation: Design innovation includes the creation of new products, services, or experiences. It requires innovators to adopt design thinking principles and creative thinking. Design innovation requires teams to understand the needs of a user group, and to generate an innovation that meets these real-world needs. Adapting an existing service to meet the needs of a new generational cohort or cultural community could be an example of design innovation.

Intrapreneurship: Intrapreneurship takes place when an employee acts like an entrepreneur – developing a new product, service, or idea – while working within the context of their company. The intrapreneur uses the resources and systems of their company to launch their idea. For example, an employee could develop a new product to be launched and sold by their current employer.

Chapter References

Berg, J. M., Dutton, J. E., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2007). What is job crafting and why does it matter? [PDF] Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship, University of Michigan. https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/What-is-Job-Crafting-and-Why-Does-it-Matter1.pdf

Bindl, U. K., Unsworth, K. L., Gibson, C. B., & Stride, C. B. (2019). Job crafting revisited: Implications of an extended framework for active changes at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(5), 605-625.

Carey, T. (2017). Our why and who. WINCan. https://www.wincan.ca

Carey, T., Frye, A., Melnick, B., Baregheh, A., Anderson, T., Abboud, V., Iyilade, Y., Soleas, E., Castela Lopes, N., & Totterdill, P. (2023, November). Inclusive workplace innovation and quality of work [PDF]. Future Skills Canada and Workplace Innovation Network for Canada. https://fsc-ccf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Inclusive-Workplace-Innovation-and-Quality-of-Work_WINCan_FSC_Report.pdf

Dhondt, S., Oeij, P., Totterdill, P., Howaldt, J., Hootegem, G., & Gramberen, M. (2012). Workplace innovation as social innovation. The Dortmund Brussels Position Paper on Workplace Innovation, 26-27.

European Commission. (2020). Workplace innovation. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/policy/innovation/workplace_en

Moore, C. (2020). What is job crafting? (Incl. 5 examples and exercises). PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/job-crafting/

Tims, M., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Job crafting: Towards a new model of individual job redesign. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 36(2), 1-9.

Totterdill, P. (2020). Workplace innovation. EUWIN.

United Nations Development Programme (2020). Strategies for supporting inclusive innovation: Insights from South-East Asia [PDF]. Report for UNDP by NESTA UK. https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publications/UNDP-RBAP-Strategies-for-Supporting-Inclusive-Innovation-2020.pdf

Attribution Statement

Content in this section is adapted from Workplace Innovation by Anahita Baregheh and Thomas Carey (2022), licensed under an Ontario Commons License – No Derivatives. Adapted with the permission of the authors and from Lesson 1.2 Enabling Inclusive Innovation in Canadian Workplaces by Thomas Carey, Anahita Baregheh, Victoria Abboud, and Tyrenny Anderson. All Rights Reserved. Adapted with the permission of the authors.