Creating an Enterprising and Entrepreneurial culture at work by Pathway Group

HOW TO GET YOUR
STAFF TO BE MORE
ENTREPRENEURIAL

Why should I want my staff to be more
entrepreneurial?
Entrepreneurial thought is defined by:
Creativity
Risk taking
Passion
Project management
These are all qualities and skills that have value
when harnessed – use it, or lose it!
Call a specialist Business Advisor at Pathway – 0121 707 0550

A culture of entrepreneurship could be the
key to growth!
There is a fine balance between top-
down and bottom-up decision making:
Top-down risks stifling creativity and
not getting the best out of your staff
Bottom-up risks disengaging the
team and wasting resources

SO HOW DO WE GET OUR
STAFF TO BE MORE
ENTREPRENEURIAL?
We have seven steps we recommend to take

Start at recruitment
New hires should be conducive to the
culture of entrepreneurship.Choose
candidates that have:
A spark of start-up
A willing to learn outside of their job
description
A history of fresh ideas
Passion for their field

Adapt your induction process
Show the staff the business. Giving them:
An understanding of what the company has in-
house and what it must outsource
An immediate introduction to other departments
Their fresh perspective on the business may
prove useful on day one – especially if the job
was occupied by someone who’d been there a
long time.

Give staff time to be creative
Can your staff spare two hours a fortnight for a creative
process? Of course, most time periods will do, but like
any project, they need to be scheduled so staff can
prepare for them.
Staff will register problems during the week they can
tackle creatively
Staff may hold onto their brainwaves rather than
discard them

How do we stop this time being wasted?
Most people relish the opportunity to be
creative – especially if it’s for their own
benefit. Give examples of small
successful ideas, like a company calendar.
If the ideas are great, let staff work on
them for longer or invite others to help
during their creative time

Invest in an innovation budget
Some of the most creative ideas come
from restricted budgets – but staff will
need some money to play with.
A budget doesn’t mean money alone –
time needs to be budgeted for as well.
These creative processes will take energy
too. Be prepared!

The benefits of a budget
Restrict projects growing too big
Force staff to direct resources
Force staff to create what they
might otherwise buy
Avoid suffocating ideas by offering
some money
Avoid staff feeling they have to use
their wages to deliver an idea

Allow internal networking
Given that companies have a flow of work from
one department to another, it makes sense
that staff understand each other
Companies with physically
separate departments
may suffer if staff don’t
know each other well – in
or out of work

Encourage social situations
Jobs may be too busy for people to
get to know each other – so when
appropriate, push people together.
Invite IT to a meeting they may have to do some work from
Offer internal training sessions across departments
Schedule an early finish once a month and use that time to
bring the whole company together

Cross-departmental knowledge
Cross-departmental knowledge will help with
understanding the financial and technical limitations
of ideas. Let’s say front-line staff wanted to develop
an app that easily allowed them to swap shifts.
The design dept might explain why it would be too
expensive
The IT dept might improve it at an early stage by
advising an alert system rather than a calendar

Adapt the environment
For the benefit of networking,
creativity and collaboration,
changing the environment is
sometimes necessary. Open-plan
or flexible stations are a common
alternative.
What is a flexible workstation?
Offices have a variety of seating, tables and designs
Staff are free to work anywhere within it

What is a flexible workstation?
Flexible workstation isn’t the best
phrase – stations are static.
These are not.
Flexible stations:
Have a variety of seating, tables and designs
Staff are free to work anywhere within it
The focus is on comfort and easy collaboration

Why use flexible workstations?
They are not to everyone’s taste as your screen is likely
to be more visible (procrastinators beware…)
The overall effect will be a boost to creativity – the
collaboration and ability for departments to interact will
spawn fresh ideas with the flaws ironed out early
Facebook and Google are known to do this – take note!

Develop an internal product
Set aside a staff weekend which involves
developing an entirely new product to use
within the business. Don’t restrict people to
their normal roles.
Let designers budget
Let admin staff design
Putting people out of their comfort zone is key
in showing them what they can achieve

Let it grow fully from concept
to working product
You may find that some staff become so enthusiastic
about it that they sleep late and wake early to work
on it.When viable, the product can be introduced
officially into the business.
Staff of all levels will make core decisions like:
How to spend the budget
When to cut an idea short
These decisions may help them appreciate the
pressures of decisions elsewhere in the business

Avoid the fear of failure
Fear of failure is the biggest block to creativity – and
ultimately entrepreneurship.This fear prevents people
developing ideas or even expending the effort to think
them.
Don’t let employees worry
about the consequences of
their creative processes.
Those are for you.

Turn failure into a positive
Change the focus from the start – the creative process is
as much about learning and understanding than it is to
end up with a working product.
Lead from the front to
encourage the culture of
entrepreneurship – see
your processes through
and show how much you
learned.

Promoting and encouraging education and training;
improving and advancing employment prospects for
individuals;
Contributing to the success of small and medium
sized employers.
To learn more, visit…

Creating an Enterprising and Entrepreneurial culture at work by Pathway Group

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Creating an Enterprising and Entrepreneurial culture at work by Pathway Group