How To Drive Innovation In The Workplace: Lessons From Industry Leaders

Innovating Data Security

Protecting personal health information (PHI) remains a constant challenge. While I worked at RevSpring, our clients asked for our assistance in preventing employees or would-be attackers from accessing PHI through our data automation and print composition processes; however, we faced an additional challenge of composing the hospital statements without PHI, and ensuring the statements were already formatted for printing.

While this may not appear to be a complex problem, each statement could contain multiple PHI elements, such as name, account number, address, etc. in various locations on the statement and in different sizes. For example, you need to have enough space to display a name like “Steven Johnson,” but not have extra space when displaying “Bob Smith.” How can you guarantee the statement does not appear with overlapping words, excessive spacing, or word wrapping issues?

Our team developed a concept for a software service that would replace PHI elements with tokens. Additionally, it would be able to reverse the process we called “de-tokenization” on demand, such as at the time of printing the statement. Given my team’s existing client commitments, I dusted off the cobwebs of my engineering skills and spent a weekend developing an API (application program interface) to implement the tokenization and de-tokenization capabilities.

This innovation enabled our organization to quickly modify the automation and printing processes to ensure the protection of PHI at the time of receipt, and throughout the remainder of the workflows. While all technology is at risk of sophisticated attackers gaining access, adding this additional layer of protection reduces risk significantly. If there were a case of attackers accessing the PHI elements, they still wouldn’t be able to associate it with the statement or any healthcare related information.

We successfully secured a patent for this innovation, which can be found here: Sensitive data attribute tokenization system.

—Eric Martin, Director of Software Engineering

Experimentation, Continuous Improvement, and Inclusion

Experimentation, creativity, and having an open mindset have helped me create and deliver workplace innovations. Finding capability solutions by focusing on the learner, similar to when using built-in GPS or an old-school compass, has helped me narrow in and test out new learning tools and inspired new ideas for any audience or problem I needed to solve.

A quick win at the end of last year was when I came across some newer AI-powered learning tools, including within LinkedIn Learning, after being posed with a problem from one of our areas that was trying to build a learning culture within a high-pressure environment. The internal client was only expecting a slide deck on what programs we had, but I pitched the idea to demo a key tool that I tested out and provided additional ideas to experiment with. They loved it! Immediately following this, usage of this learning technology increased, and a behaviour change was sprouting as the seed had been planted.

Having a continuous improvement mindset also acts like a magnet for ideas. Whether it’s helping a company move away from using manuals and guides over to online microlearning solutions, or my inner need to improve ways of supporting clients that led to streamlining a process that saved five or more hours of work per week at TAL Insurance. If you open yourself up to this type of mindset, great workplace innovations will take place for you and wherever you work.

Through individuals, impactful innovations can take place, but by bringing people together, the impact can be magnified. We can all find more workplace innovations by ensuring we bring everyone along who needs to be at the table and create a psychologically safe and supportive environment that sprouts new ideas.

Imagine talking about what behaviour change or upskill a group needs when the impacted audience is not represented. Guess what? That does happen, and it happened at my last workplace. I ensured they were included at the next project meeting, and they recommended a simpler idea that led to implementation success! Ensure you bring people in, as their ideas may surprise you and lead to an innovative solution that transforms your workplace.

—Jon Le Breton, Learning and Development Consultant

Leveraging Existing Tools for Smarter Solutions

Workplace innovation might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about FP&A (financial planning and analysis). When most people hear “finance,” they think of accounting processes like invoicing clients, writing checks, and pumping out financial statements. But in FP&A, we’re doing so much more. We are not just looking at what has already happened; we’re also looking toward the future and considering how decisions made today will affect the company’s future.

Translating data into a narrative that can be easily digested by decision makers is critical. And rolling out innovative strategies to streamline that process can both speed things up as well as provide additional insights. I saw this firsthand when I was working on a team that was consolidating massive datasets each month. Each analyst tracked client renewals for their respective products and then the data was consolidated at the end of each month. This often led to a day-long exercise to get everything reconciled before we could produce summarized reporting. I knew there had to be a better way.

I approached the team and asked for their thoughts. We tossed around several solutions and landed on a tool that was already available to us but rarely used. We assigned a project leader and got to work. But we quickly ran into roadblocks and realized that our tool of choice was not going to be a winner without an investment.

At that point, we decided to take a step back and reassess. We floated our challenge by several colleagues in adjacent departments, and found one who was particularly interested in our problem. As the admin for a finance tool we already used, he understood our problem well. Within a few months, we rolled out a new solution using the existing tool. There was no additional cost to the company, it cut down our consolidation time by 50%, and it increased our reporting capabilities.

Often, I think leaders hear the term “workplace innovation” and think “expensive.” It doesn’t have to be that way. Sometimes the best solution is not a new tool. Leveraging existing strengths and technologies in new ways maximizes the value of investments already made. Work smarter, not harder.

—Lindsey Martens, Finance Director

Harnessing AI for Smarter, More Creative Workplace Communication

As a 20-year communications professional, I’ve seen workplace innovation take many forms. From the simplest tweak to a process that saves hours of labor to bringing in technology that aligns an entire corporate communications team around a single source of truth editorial calendar, innovation can come from anywhere in your organization.

Over the last six months, my workplace innovation has been heavily focused on bringing AI models into corporate communications to help generate creativity and new ideas—and save time.

This does not mean AI is doing heavy writing or replacing people; we’re not ready for that yet. Rather, AI can help save time on some key tasks that help improve your processes and kickstart your thinking on key topics.

If you’re unfamiliar with AI, getting great results is all about prompt engineering, which is simply the art of crafting the right request to get the output you want. Here are a few prompts that I’ve been working to perfect to help in the corporate communications world.

• From the perspective of an employee communications director, please search for five people-focused topics to communicate about for the month of March. [Purpose: build your editorial calendar]
• If you were CEO of a pharmaceutical company, what would be the pros and cons of working for your company? [Purpose: kickstart thinking for talent acquisition copy]
• Provide an analogy to explain “inflation” in simple terms. How can I visualize this analogy in a simple image? [Purpose: brainstorm ideas for an article to explain inflation to your employees with an accompanying illustration]

In addition to developing prompts that can help kick off brainstorming, topics, and analogies for complex topics, I have also been looking to use AI integration with email tools to help personalize messages in ways beyond [INSERT NAME]. It wouldn’t have been possible five years ago to customize messages based on title, role, location, or interests in a meaningful way. Now, you can personalize messages in new ways, with only your imagination—and time—as the limit.

Workplace innovation can come from anywhere if you keep your employees engaged and informed about your company purpose, vision, and goals. When engaged people understand where you want to go, you’ll see workplace innovation appear in the most unlikely places.

—Jerry Rice, Employee Communications and Engagement