Goal
Provide any interested OIT staff with access to time (5% time in their normal work schedule) to move-forward their ideas and engage with innovation and experimentation activities.
Background
Innovation is a prominent aspect of the UCI Strategic Pillars, HR’s Achieve staff performance program, OIT’s core mission, and OIT’s Cascading Goals – yet many people have a hard time defining innovation, figuring out how to be more innovative, and delivering on new innovations. Staff and leadership across all areas and levels of UCI and OIT want to see innovation, but most people are so focused on delivering existing priorities they don’t feel they have time to innovate.
OIT’s Accelerating Innovation framework is defining and educating people on the many aspects of innovation. It provides various resources and support for conceiving and advancing innovative ideas, sharing them for community input, scoring and refining them with an idea coach, identifying and gathering needed resources, and developing proofs of concept that can be evaluated for broader implementation.
However, Accelerating Innovation is a voluntary effort and while many people have shared ideas, there’s always a challenge finding the time to work on them and take them to the next level.
Overview
To help promote a growing and sustainable culture of innovation across OIT, Innovation Time is available to all employees on an opt-in basis. Any full-time OIT employee in good standing who gets approval from their supervisor will have 5% of their work time (generally 2 hours a week) as Innovation Time where they can use a portion of their working hours dedicated to innovation, research and bringing their ideas forward.
In close coordination with their supervisor, people can either use their Innovation Time to engage with the OIT Accelerating Innovation program or they can pursue their own independent work on experimentation and innovative ideas.
Innovators will continue to be responsible for their primary work responsibilities – and they, their supervisor, and upstream management will be responsible for assuring the Innovation Time is scheduled appropriately and focused on relevant ideas.
When someone develops an innovative idea that requires more time, attention, and resources than available with Innovation Time, they can route it through OIT’s Accelerating Innovation framework for coaching and to help garner any additionally needed resources. As an idea grows toward a proof of concept, they can create a ServiceNow Project record to help organize and track their work.
Innovation Time is aimed at shaping OIT’s culture to encourage more creativity, independence, risk-taking, and learning from failing-fast.
Details
- Any interested, full-time OIT employees in good standing can opt-in to using Innovation Time via discussion and approval from their supervisor
- No additional sign-up or approval process beyond their immediate supervisor is required
- Employees can start participating with Innovation Time at any point throughout the year once they get their supervisor’s approval
- Employees can use Innovation Time for as long as they’d like based on discussion and approval with their supervisor
- Each innovator will be granted 5% of their time they can dedicate to innovation activities at their discretion
- The scheduled use of Innovation Time is subject to approval by their supervisors and/or upstream management, but approval is generally expected to be given readily
- Employees are accountable to their supervisor for how they are using Innovation Time – Supervisors are encouraged to leverage OIT Cascading Goals and UCI’s Achieve initiative for employee/manager collaboration, goal-setting and accountability regarding use of Innovation Time
- Scheduling Innovation Time should be done as a collaboration between an employee and their supervisor
- Employee commitments to their primary responsibilities shall not be forfeited or neglected for this time
- If current priorities are too significant to allow its immediate use, employees and supervisors should work together to make a plan towards scheduling future Innovation Time – If innovation time pushes over standard work time, employees can coordinate with their supervisor on when more Innovation Time can be used
- Supervisors and employees can be flexible in how they schedule the time but should agree on the planned approach – there may be more creative/effective ways than a simple 2-hours per week
- Innovation Time should be tracked in a general manner following OIT’s Effort Reporting guidelines – ServiceNow has an “Innovation Time” effort reporting category – When Innovation Time is used for a more concrete idea that’s developing as a proof of concept, effort can be tracked against a related ServiceNow project the employee creates for it. When this is done, we ask that you email the Accelerating Innovation sponsors at oit-innovation@uci.edu to let them know they project number so they can track it.
- Supervisors will coordinate with their participating direct reports on how they’re using their Innovation Time
- Supervisors are encouraged to support employee participation in activities encouraged by the Accelerating Innovation sponsors, such as self-initiated ideation workshops and coaching activities
- Supervisors are encouraged to give additional time to allow for deeper thought and faster delivery of impactful ideas when possible
- Supervisors are encouraged to reach out to the Accelerating Innovation sponsors by emailing oit-innovation@uci.edu for feedback, questions, coaching and information sharing, especially if there are questions about the innovative nature of ideas
- Deliverable proofs of concept are not a required product of this time, but they are highly desired
- Before an actionable proof of concept or outcome is designed, it will often be beneficial that employees start by researching opportunities and contemplating challenges in a thoughtful manner
- Developing a write-up of ideas may be a useful first-step so that others can help assess, evaluate and shape ideas that are leading toward something new and useful
- Innovators are encouraged to share both their successes and failures – the Acceleration Coordination sponsors are always happy for people to share their innovative work via the Accelerating Innovation MS Teams channel, at monthly ARB meetings or other appropriate OIT events.
- The OIT Accelerating Innovation sponsors will continue to be responsible for ongoing outreach, communication and other activities to maintain awareness and promote use of Innovation Time
FAQ
Q: Why are we doing this?
We are seeking to grow the innovation aspects of OIT’s culture in sustainable ways – this requires large efforts and big buy-ins, especially from upper management. It is not good enough that isolated pods of innovation struggle to move forward – obstacles must be cleared, a specific path needs to be defined, and obvious management support should be apparent.
Q: Is this mandatory?
No. Employees who do not wish to use this time are not required to change anything about how they work now. We simply want to open up a path for those who seek greater innovation but don’t have the time due to constant priorities.
Q: Is it mandatory for supervisors to provide this time?
Employees who are interested in using Innovation Time can opt-in via agreement/approval from their supervisor. Supervisors are strongly encouraged to approve requested Innovation Time for any full-time employees in good standing. Saying yes to an employee who wants to pursue this ought to be easier than withholding approval, and steps should be taken to guide the employee towards a path that would lead to approval. The Accelerating Innovation sponsors are available to collaborate with supervisors and innovators towards paving this path.
Q: How can the time be structured?
The 2-hours per week represents a concept of 5% time within a 40-hour work week. Employees and their supervisors can be creative about how they allocate/budget the time. It may be possible to save up time and use it as a longer block for more focused work. A supervisor may need to ask an employee to “save up” their innovation time when there’s especially high priority work that needs to be done, and then schedule time to use it when their primary responsibilities calm down.
Q: Can a supervisor combine the time from multiple people and reallocate it to one person?
No, Innovation Time is intended to be for each employee. If more time or other resources are needed for an especially strong idea, that idea should be routed to the Accelerating Innovation sponsors.
Q: How should I track my effort during Innovation Time?
Follow OIT’s Effort Reporting guidelines – a ServiceNow Time Card “Other” category of “Innovation Time” is available and rolls-up as “Grow” effort. Individuals can either use that category or record effort toward a specific project that represents a proof of concept being developed from their Innovation Time.
Q: How is this different from Training or Admin time?
OIT promotes that every employee should have at least 40 hours a year available for training, including UC-required training as well as professional development training/opportunities. Innovation Time is different than training or admin time. However, in collaboration with their supervisors, employees can leverage both training time and innovation time to learn and then experiment/apply new concepts. OIT’s Effort Reporting guidelines have more information about the different time categories.
Q: Couldn’t this be taken advantage of?
Without thoughtful action and guidance, yes, this may happen; however, we would like to point out a couple of OIT’s core values: Trust, Transparency, Learn & Grow, Respect, Inclusiveness, and Collaboration. The default position ought to be to Trust and Respect the innovator’s ability, ethics, and judgement. Transparency on the part of the innovator will further alleviate any doubts and concerns over the time used. This program provides a great opportunity for the innovator to learn and grow, collaborate with teams they may not normally come into contact with, and by giving everyone the same opportunity with this initiative, we are embodying inclusiveness.
Q: What resources are available to employees who are excited to start, but don’t know where to begin?
This Accelerating Innovation website includes ideation workshop materials and other resources that are intended to help inspire and jump-start innovative ideas from attendees – no previous experience required. These workshops are an excellent opportunity to draft innovative ideas, curate them with the feedback of peers in a safe environment, and grow the confidence they need to carry out their idea to fruition.
Q: I don’t agree with something in this concept
Thank you in advance for bringing up your concern and please contact the OIT Accelerating Innovation sponsors (oit-innovation@uci.edu). This concept is not set in stone nor is it a comprehensive specification for how this should be implemented. We welcome new perspectives and collaboration on how best to move forward.
Q: What is innovation and how can I learn more about OIT’s Accelerating Innovation Program?
Review the OIT Innovation Site starting here: https://innovation.oit.uci.edu/home/learn/
Examples
This section suggests some different ways that Innovation Time might be used in order to help inspire those who may not be sure what they’d like to do with it.
- Ideation time (Accelerating Innovation Ideation Workshops, self exploration, small-group discussion/exploration)
- Time spent identifying/articulating a specific problem/opportunity
- Research into possible solutions
- Idea creation, defnition and refinment
- Creating a proof of concept
- Discussion with other individuals on helpfulness of proposed idea
- Meeting with others who can help progress ideas forward
- General idea brainstorming
- Idea are encouraged to focus on key OIT Strategies such as “Reducing Run Effort” and “Facilitating Remote Work” – as well as generally adding new value for OIT and the campus