The EngServ Case Story[1]

“EngServ” is an engineering services company in Western Canada that focuses on offering progressive solutions to complex challenges. As a group of “passion-fueled engineers, designers, technologists, and city-building experts,” the EngServ team consistently strives for agility and sustainable performance.

With approximately 270 employees across five offices in Canada and the United States, EngServ has built is 147 services for the last 12 years in the following key areas: bridge engineering, building envelope, construction engineering, expert advisory services, fire engineering, restoration services, special projects, structural engineering and sustainable performance.

The EngServ innovation team mandate includes both a scouting role for opportunities and talent, and a broker role to help teams come together and engage in the two innovation pathways described below. The lead Innovation Catalyst at EngServ, “Leslie”, works half of their time as the workplace innovation coordinator and the other half as the lead in another work area. They are supported by two other (more junior) part-time innovation specialists.

EngServ identified the need to develop strategies to encourage all employees to engage willingly in the two formal innovation activity pathways supported by the firm:

1. Idea Hopper, an Idea Management System for employees’ suggested innovation issues, opportunities, and projects (in a later Lesson, we will review research on this as an innovation activity pathway
2. Design Challenges that lie outside of the employees’ day-to-day assigned duties (and often outside of their formal engineering training).

In both activity pathways, EngServ hoped to improve employee participation and results (i.e. the “solutions” identified through either pathway), while also embedding the expectation that every employee in the organization has the capability to be an innovator. Innovation opportunities are open to everyone.

Both initiatives have demonstrated success, along with challenges related to participation and the potential for actual solutions to perceived issues.

• • (1) Idea Hopper: By using a collaborative software system for the Idea Hopper (similar to an old “suggestion box” model), contributors are asked to add their ideas to the open web space for consideration [2]. The person who inputs the idea is asked to identify the value proposition of the idea (categorized within EngServ’s three “strategic innovation drivers” as a framework: revenue generation, efficiency/effectiveness, social culture). At the time of preparing this lesson, there were 360 items that individuals had contributed to the Idea Hopper.

Not every idea can be actioned, so as part of the Idea Hopper, every idea is categorized using a T-shirt analogy: XS (extra small) to L (large). If the idea can fit into XS (equivalent to 8 hours of time) then the person is empowered to create a prototype (i.e., “go do it!”) to ensure that participants are motivated to try new ideas and to find out quickly whether the idea has potential. Conversely, if an idea is estimated to take more than 6 months, then the contributor is coached to find a portion of the idea that can be tested to move the concept forward in less than six months. This strategy supports quick testing of ideas and efficiency in addressing the potential of Idea Hopper submissions.

The openness of the Idea Hopper allows everyone in the firm to review others’ ideas. Often, this results in cross-collaboration and creative additions to submitted ideas. Active projects are also visible so that others can contribute along the way.

• (2) Design Challenges: The Design Challenges are larger innovation projects that focus on finding solutions to bigger problems. Different challenges are posed by management and employees ask to join a specific team to address that Challenge. The program provides a “matching” system where employees can ask to work with others on teams that cross working group boundaries within EngServ.

Although there was greater participation in the Design Challenges than expected (i.e., 30 employees asked to be added to one of the teams), several concerns emerged related to the Design Challenge initiative:

1. Of the 10 Design Challenge project teams established in the two years this pathway has been in place, only 3 teams have moved on to the proposal presentation stage.
2. The large number of interested employees required unanticipated effort by the Innovation Catalyst team to match the interested individuals’ strengths and preferences with members of the organization.

• • Some employees raised concerns such as “My boss might not like me doing a Design Challenge project” or “I don’t have enough experience to take on a Design Challenge.”

Overall, the workplace innovation strategies that EngServ employed were not fully addressing the firm’s goals for inclusive workplace innovation. The project management for innovation projects was much different than typical project management that employees knew. Also, there was not a clear connection between the innovation strategies and established Human Resources management processes.

For example, one strategy was expressed informally as the “three times rule”: if an employee is dissatisfied with a work process three times, they should report it to the team lead to stimulate rethinking of the process. However, this rule was not applied consistently and there was no formal tracking of the results from the reports that were made.

The focus of EngServ’s Innovation Catalyst efforts has coalesced around two enhancement goals:

• • empowering employees to “build the work they would like to be doing” by engaging in collaborative, employee-led innovation; and
  • enabling support for the employee teams in doing that work.

Supplementary goals for these workplace innovation initiatives include building an innovation culture that would help EngServ attract the best engineering talent and creating social impact by establishing a more inclusive and diverse team.