Home / Research & Reports / 2017 Benchmarking Report: Culture of Innovation
Executive Summary
Data from the Annual Benchmarking Survey developed by the International Public Management Association for Human Resources in collaboration with its Research Committee inform this 2017 IPMA-HR Benchmarking Report: Culture of Innovation. A total 311 responses were received from our 5,275 IPMA-HR members. Key findings from the Benchmarking Survey include the following.
Key Findings
- Structural and cultural conditions that support innovation vary by organization size. More medium-sized and large organizations include innovation in their mission statements and employ a chief innovation officer than do smaller organizations. On average, however, human resources professionals at smaller organizations rate communications between staff members, managers and staff, and departments higher than do their counterparts at larger organizations.
- As government institutions’ mission is to meet public needs, incremental service innovations are the most common types of innovations. Respondents’ organizations are most frequently adopting upgrades or employing new methods and technologies to improve the delivery of existing services.
- IPMA-HR members from organizations that include innovation in their mission, vision, or value statements gave higher ratings to communication, collaboration, and support for change. These Benchmarking Survey respondents also tended to rate their organizations better for placing higher value on discussing, generating, and executing new ideas.
- Primary challenges to innovation vary by organization size, but IPMA-HR members from organizations of all sizes and types identified the same top factor for enabling innovation. At medium-sized and large organizations, outdated HR systems represent the greatest challenge to innovation, while budget constraints most often made innovation difficult at small organizations. Across all survey respondents, almost 40% agreed that support from leadership was most needed to enable HR to play a role in organization-wide innovation.
- Organizations where senior leadership show greater support for innovation rated higher for levels of autonomy and for better communication between staff and managers.
- The strongest trend in HR innovation is a shift toward digital and cloud-based processes. All areas of recruitment, hiring, compensation, performance management, and learning and development have recently transformed or are currently transforming from a reliance on paper forms to software platforms.