Introduction
Innovation can occur in various ways in an organization. There are instances when the overall strategy in the organization has to be changed. There are other times when the nature of the industry is also innovated. All these things go through various stages. Innovation rarely occurs suddenly as it mostly goes through various processes. Innovation in an organization almost always brings about positive development.
Innovation can be initiated by various people. These people include the innovation agents, management, leaders, or even employees in industry including our garment industry. Our industry has specialized in the manufacturing of men’s suits, and the following factors have always been considered in our garment industry when carrying out innovation.
Training, Incentives, and Education
According to the research conducted, training is a planned program to improve and bring about changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes, and social behavior. When training is done, it brings along the development. Development is a long-term educational process aimed at preparing employees for future responsibility through the acquisition of new experience, skills, knowledge, and attitudes. All employees in our garment industry undergo a training program in the case where there is the implementation of new technology in the company. New employees in the industry are always job trained so that they can be able to adapt to the functions of the industry and also operate in the way the company operates (McNamara, 2001).
Training involves behavior modification which is normally carried out in a formal and systematic manner in our garment industry. It is a result of planned experience, instruction, and education. Training and education play a big role in the achievement of the innovation goals of the garment industry. Most of these goals in our industry are normally long-term in nature. Training is part of the strategic framework of the garment industry. It produces a comprehensive and coherent plan that helps in developing employees and other stakeholders in the garment industry.
The aim and objectives of carrying out training and education strategy in our garment industry include: To recruit new staff on a merit basis, to help eradicate or minimize absenteeism in the garment industry, ensure gender balance in management, introduce an information technology system for checkouts, implement employee appraisal schemes, to improve leadership and professional skills of employees and to enhance behavior modification among employees (Torrington, and Hall, 2006).
Incentives are always regarded as motivating factors towards the employees in our industry; this has always been done by the managers being on the lookout for employees who perform well. For instance, cleaners who always arrive at work in good time and who carry out their responsibilities well without supervision can be promoted to become leaders of the entire staff in charge of sanitation. This makes the rest of the staff improve their performance knowing that they would be rewarded by being also promoted. This plays a big role in improving the performance in our garment industry (Thomson, and Rampton, 2003).
Leadership
In any social setup or organization, the importance of leadership cannot be underestimated. Leaders within our garment industry do the planning for most of the sectors such as financial, marketing, policy formulation, and control of the major assets. In addition, they also do the control, organizing, and leading of all the aspects of innovation in the industry. They also exercise their powers on any issue arising, such as the decision-making processes. In addition, they build industry standards for the organization, set systems running, and document procedures that guide both the leaders and employees within the organization (Torrington and Hall, 2006).
The leaders in our garment industry are responsible for building the large workforce and human resources within it. They build teams and develop the necessary talents that are seriously needed by the organization to perform their duties. These leaders also inspire, mentor, set examples, innovate and revolutionize all aspects of the organization in order to achieve the best from them. Therefore, the core purpose of leadership in our garment industry is to channel all the employees’ behavior towards attaining the organization’s objectives of innovation.
Leadership is thus essential in creating and maintaining a healthy organizational culture within the garment industry. In this case, we find that leadership has actually played a major role in setting goals and objectives for the organization whereby the objectives and the goals of the organization provide and insight into what the organization is up to (Torrington and Hall, 2006).
Monitoring the company’s progress includes its performance in the market in terms of current rating compared to other companies. Where there is any negative progress, they provide guidance and direction, and if there is an improvement, it passes the information to the other employees and congratulates them for a job well done.
Making investments leadership is counted responsible for making investments for the garment industry by globalizing the products/services of the company. Such investments include building factories, training the personnel on production procedures, and reporting the progress of the company to all the stakeholders of the company (Thomson, and Rampton, 2003).
Communicate issues, leaders and managers communicate what they consider important to all the other employees within the garment organization. Communication is the ideal tool for making sure that the company creates and maintains a healthy organizational culture within it. Communication can be in the form of giving instructions on how work shall be done within the company or reading out the financial progress of the company over a certain period of time.
Provision of new ideas with stiff competition from other garment organizations, the garment organization is under pressure to come up with more improved products. The managers and leaders in our industry always work in collaboration with the players in the organization to come up with new brands and services for the organization. Provision of new ideas is, therefore, the responsibility of those in authority in the company and diverge this information to other employees (Thomson, and Rampton, 2003).
Leadership plays a major role in the formulation of policies; these policies are considered to be the main movers of a company in terms of the strategic tackling of important issues. Policies range from legal restrictions, trade tariffs, industry standards, competitors’ advantages, and company regulations.
Implications of Individual Reward System
Individual reward systems are very vital in every organization, including our garment industry. This is because they play a big role in improving the performance of the staff. The garment industry uses reward systems to improve the performance of its staff by praising employees who attain set targets. This is always done in organization meetings or also at the individual level. Rewards are often carried out for the industry to achieve better results. Managers in the garment industry ensure that the set measures are attainable for them to motivate employees to improve their performance (Thomson, and Rampton, 2003).
This company has been using individual reward systems to improve the performance of employees by incorporating appraisal or promotion for employees who have a good record of performance. Another way through which the garment industry uses reward systems to improve performance is through personalizing the reward.
Many organizations put the rewards to be so general that some employees don’t actually value them. By personalizing the reward, there is the anchoring of the meaning of achievement more deeply than if it is treated as an administrative task that is mechanical. Managers in the garment industry usually ensure that the reward systems are designed based on the SMART criteria. This means that they are always specific, meaningful, achievable, reliable, and timely. The implementation of the reward systems in our industry has actually led to the improvement of the performance of the workforce.
With all these factors I can therefore conclude that our industry is innovative the reason for this is that it has been coming up with different designs of men’s suits since for every business to survive it needs to be innovative and come up with new products, in this case, our company has been innovative by coming up with different designs of suits in order to withstand stiff competition from its competitors.
The industry is also accredited with the best innovative marketing network that has made the company do well globally. Our garment industry has opened many subsidiaries in many countries for example; it has a number of markets all over the world which sells the men’s suits. Research shows that this garment industry is quite global in nature. It operates branches in several countries. The garment industry has the best distribution channels, which have been a strength that has significantly helped the industry to dominate the market for a long time.
The other competitive strategy associated with garment industry is that it has utilized its ability to identify the market segments and hence the competitive position of the company is considered to be high than that of its competitors and has in the process developed workable marketing strategies, our garment industry is among the largest garment industries in the world and it has got many assets that help it to serve a wide range of customers (Torrington, and Hall, 2006).
Reference
McNamara, C. (2001): Employee Training and Development: Reasons and Benefits; Macmillan Press, New York, Pp. 7-13.
Torrington, D. and Hall, L. (2006): Human Resource Management; Prentice-Hall, London Pp. 21-29.
Thomson, C. and Rampton, L. (2003): Human Resource Management; Melbourne press, New York Pp. 33-41.