You Don’t Need an Exciting Mission to Foster Innovation

Technology has dramatically transformed the way federal employees perform their jobs --from cloud computing to telework --but when to comes to finding new, innovative ways of doing things, most feds lack the appropriate support.
 
The Partnership for Public Service'sreport“Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Snapshot: Achieving a Culture of Innovation," which is based on results of the 2011 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, found that themajority of employees (92 percent) are looking for ways to perform their jobs better, but far fewer (59 percent) said they are encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things. In addition, only 38.2 percent of feds said that creativity and innovation are rewarded.Taken together, those three questions resulted in a governmentwide innovation score of 63 percent.
 
Those scores lie in stark contrast to how private sector workers view their ability to innovate and be creative on the job. For example, 71 percent of private workers say they are encouraged to come up with new and better way of doing things, the analysis found. “This sizable difference shows that the government has a long way to go to catch up with the private sector when it comes to empowering employees to embark on creative approaches to solving problems,” the report states.
 
So what are the most innovative agencies in government? Innovation scores at NASA (75 percent), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (74 percent), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (69 percent), General Services Administration (69 percent) and the State Department were the highest. The lowest innovation scores went tothe Housing and Urban Development (57 percent), Labor (57 percent), Transportation (56 percent) and Homeland Security (55 percent) departments,and the Securities and Exchange Commission (53 percent).  
 
The Surface Transportation Board (87.7 percent) had the highest innovation score among small agencies and agencies overall, while the National Labor Relations Board (52 percent) had the lowest innovation score of small agencies and agencies overall.
 
While one would expect agencies like NASA to rank high on the innovation scale, the Partnership noted that the high innovation scores at the Surface Transportation Board illustrate thatan agency does not need an excitingmission and history to create a culture of innovation. Forexample, board leaders at the STB encourage employees to make suggestions during a weekly open door meeting and honor the best proposals with the agency’s “genius” award, presented at an annual ceremony.
 
“While there are a variety of obstacles that can make innovation difficult, government agencies cannot afford to maintain the status quo or ignore the perspective of their employees,” the report states. “Leaders must take the initiative to foster a culture of innovation, engage, empower and encourage employees and reward creativity.”
 
Where did your agency rank on innovation? What could your agency leaders being doing better to build up your ability and motivation to innovate? Are cultural/generational issues at play?