You're managing ongoing BPO services. How do you foster a culture of innovation within your team?

Continuous process improvement should be a part of your performance metrics and it should be incentivized. KPIs like quality and productivity targets should be made more & more rigorous year on year. This will automatically encourage your team to come up with ideas for improving process efficiency. To reinforce the idea generation process, it is important to not just create a conducive environment but you also need to provide the appropriate training. For e.g. Lean & Six Sigma methodology. Opportunities should also be given to attend events and conferences to understand industry trends, practices & benchmarks. Working in close collaboration with other teams gives an end-to-end perspective and a holistic understanding to help generate ideas.

Just encourage the team and reward it in a way they would love it. Giving a voucher worth INR 2000 of a disc and pub to a team member who is alcoholic or a less party guy, wont be that rewarding, just keep it relatable and the worth achievable. Apart from these 2, give credits to your team/member for their innovative ideas and the outcome you got, team always feel special when the work is worth valued enough and appreciated in the crowd. AT last, don't just expect them to do wonders, provide them the right resources to think out of the box, keep them the breather to come out of BEU and get ready for fantastic outcome. By the way, do join us to experience all I mentioned above!

Based on my experience, Create a Safe space - as per gallup poll, employees who feel their opinions count are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. Regular Skip Level Meetings followed by brainstorming sessions. Have a session that even the quietest voice is heard. As per HBR, this can lead to 20% increase in employee engagements. Celebrate small wins - Recognition reach culture have lower employee turnover.

Offer ongoing training and development programs to keep your team updated with the latest industry trends, technologies, and best practices. Knowledge is a catalyst for innovation. Encourage cross-functional training and collaboration. Exposure to different perspectives and skills can spark creative thinking and new ideas. Implement incentive programs that reward employees for innovative contributions. This could include bonuses, awards, or other forms of recognition.

Access to latest tools like, For training - Game based learning platforms. It is quick, fun, gamification and fantastic. Career development opportunities - Promoter internal promotions and opportunities. As per Linkedin Learning - 94% of employee would stay longer, if company invest in career development of employees. Show trust and value - even saying that I trust you and you can do it, deliver the impact of keeping employee motivated for next 50 to 55 days.

Acknowledging contribution and appreciation publically always helps. It boost morale. As per the Deloitte, companies with recognition programs see a 14% improvements or increase in productivity. Celebrate in group - group celebration fosters the culture of unity and shared purpose. Focus on Non-Monetary rewards - What has worked wonders for us is extra day off, early logout, publically rewarding certificates and awards goes long way than monetary rewards.

Foster and facilitate an environment where talent and innovation are rewarded and recognised. Ownership helps employees connect and get engaged to a greater degree because it gives them a platform to showcase their talents for growth. This ultimately will create a culture of continual growth while improving employee engagement.

Promote open communication and autonomy, empower team members to experiment, and take calculated risks. Recognize and reward innovative ideas, Cascade knowledge, and development in areas like design thinking and problem-solving. Lead by example as a manager, and create a feedback loop for continuous improvement as it is mandated to keep your internal customers(Team) happy to foster an innovative team culture.

We always do a cross function process training - It has worked wonders for us. Assigning a task to a multiple department groups rather than just sample department. It has also worked for us. As per Mckinsey, team are like to perform better by 35%. Breaking down silos among department is mostly important. No blame game policy. Only collaboration policy should get implemented. It has worked for us.

Learn from failure, BPO professional does not have any specific educational back ground so errors are bound to take place, majorly at initial stage of the career.