HR and Leadership Aspects of Innovation

HR and Leadership Aspects of Innovation

Innovation within an organization has cumulative effects on the economic survival of the firm. Globalization has brought about the extension of technology, which has resulted in a sharp increase in productivity and consumer satisfaction. According to David, innovation within an organizational context is a purposeful change, and it occurs within a framework practically created to meet the demands of the customers (315). To this extent, an innovative process is usually complex and relates to the phenomena right from the inception of the scientific idea to the commercialization of the same. In a company such as Henkel laundry and home care, the object of management featured by diversity and uncertainty, which is essential for a stochastic process. Innovation comes from many fronts within an organization, mostly from the employees who try out new methods and procedures to ensure efficiency and increased productivity. In this regard, the organizational environment plays a significant role in enhancing innovation among human resources, although other settings resist the adoption of innovation. Similarly, the innovative culture within the organization can also support and motivate creative employees. Therefore, a look at Henkel laundry and home care company provides an opportunity to evaluate how an organization enables its talented individuals to drive the innovation process.

Henkel innovation culture

Henkel is a Germany based company that specializes in manufacturing beauty care products, laundry, and home care products. Henkel is a family business that was started in 1876 by Fritz Henkel. Its culture of innovation since then has based on family values that extend from management to the thousands of employees who are well motivated and feel part and parcel of the company ownership. Henkel culture is the one that puts the clients at the core of the business and is committed to taking financial responsibility for all of its stakeholders as well as committed to sustainable social responsibility. According to Barjaktarovic, Leadership with vision and not merely having technical competencies usually help managers to cultivate innovative activities among its staff, and hence a leadership that supports innovation is a driving force behind the success of businesses (102). In this regard, innovation at Henkel Company is essential for the success of the business, and to create innovation is the ambition of the company where delivery of value to the client and the society as a whole is the primary pillar of success. Therefore, Henkel Company can generate new ideas for sustainable innovations through close interaction between researchers and the marketing team as they consider the whole production chain to enhance the production of quality products.

Integrating innovative employees

The integration of talented and creative employees into the system at Henkel is one of how the companies maintain their innovation chain and improvement of products. Besides the traditional methods of recruitment of employees, such as the use of recruitment agencies, Henkel has successfully implemented an employee referral program where employees from otherorganization referred to the company and vice versa with talents that can suit a give job description (Dibrov 92). Similarly, Henkel has introduced a new digital program, which is a talent initiative that attracts professionals with the zeal of expending their digital expertise. The program runs for one year and offers people with talent an opportunity to craft and explore their skills through the company’s digital projects. Through this initiative, the company gives its permanent employees a chance to interact with professionals and be able to explore their talents and become innovative at work. Additionally, Henkel has also developed a talent search program that addresses the digitally talented intrapreneurs who can become the leaders of change within the organization. With such a unique on-the-job method, Henkel has enabled young professional to become leaders in digital opinion across the company’s products such as adhesive technologies, laundry and home care as well as beauty products.

Based on their expertise and interests as well as their professional experience, the new talents can choose among the several available core areas of production where they can put their talents into practice. The core areas of production at Henkel include Technology and artificial intelligence, leverage industry, and digital business, as their talents rotated through projects and different responsibilities. This method enables the employees as well as the interns to craft their careers while at the same time shaping and transforming Henkel’s digital platforms (Henkel). The strategy for the digital transformation projects recognizes the difference in employee population across its affiliate companies around the globe. Hence, Henkel has divided its skills development group into two, first is the digital-based, and the second is the technical expert fit group. Besides, working groups also created with each team identifying the skills that they need to take the company forward. This method has not only enabled the development of skills and recognition of weaknesses and strengths but has also promoted leadership development, which is critical in driving innovations. Although some employees resisted the working groups, they later convinced that they needed to do it to remain relevant and viable within the organization.

Resistance to innovation

Organizational environments often resist the adoption of innovations. In the beginning, it is reasonable to see strength, but later on, after the employees understand the change, they approve of it and help it grow through the market as it becomes part of their culture. Apart from the company, the economic systems also resist innovation changes due to their nature of development, which affects the subsequent rate of innovation development (Cornescu and Adam 457). The manifestation of resistance usually develops from a specific feature of the external environment as well as the organizational context. Besides, institutional are people’s habitual traits that form the company’s culture, and they tend to overcome their existence through the resistance of innovations. At Henkel, it is evident that social norms may become absolute or a source of capital if well utilized as they are hard to change. In this regard, the primary source of resistance to innovation at Henkel is the social interactions and the deep-rooted classical culture leading to competition between technology and the organization (Büchler 44). In such a scenario, the initial rapid increases of marginal utility demonstrate the embodiment of the organization with the initial resistance of innovation, making it harder to prove the existence of an alternative.

However, there are various ways to overcome organizational resistance. Overcoming innovation resistance is embedded in the regulations, culture, and the principles of the company. Such tenets may include risk assessment, the management of innovation resistance, the regulation of organizational stability, as well as the education (Fischer and Rohde 95). Other ways of overcoming resistance include informing the employees about the consequences of the resistance. I this regard, the employees will know the rule and regulations of the company that guides against such resistance or sabotage. At Henkel, although the company has a policy of fairness as the employees are free to express themselves as well as reject or accepted changes, there are set regulations that prohibit the employees from sabotaging the company’s innovation process (Henkel). Other ways of overcoming resistance include the convergence of innovation goals with employees such that the management, the employees, and the innovators all read from the same page. Also, the improvement of working conditions may overcome resistance as the employees will support the project or innovation as they are sure that it will not affect there working conditions. The demonstration of the benefits of the change, as well as the organization of staff training on the innovation, is methods where the employer can overcome innovation resistance.

Overall, in dynamics and modernized economies, Henkel has a competitive advantage in innovation, which is the most adaptable and responsive model of organizational change. The integration of employees, as well as interns into the programs of innovation and the subsequent support of talent, enhances the adaptability of the company. Innovation at Henkel covers all the functional processes and is consistent with the market strategy and hence the need for continuous innovation. The innovation culture of Henkel stems from its founder in 1876 in Germany and has remained to be the culture that is committed to sustainable social responsibility, puts clients at the core of the business, and is committed to financial obligation. Besides, Henkel embraces innovation as the fundamental pillar of development, and they do this by engaging the employees through annual awards and promotions that motivates them to work harder. Therefore in an era of AI and IT, technology is speeding up the production process as well as the customer interaction at Henkel ad hence the organization has enabled talented individuals to drive the innovation process and be leaders of change.