How to keep innovation going while everyone's working from home

It's been about a month since organizations across the globe have been working remotely. In the beginning, it was all about ensuring business continuity. However, now that most of us have settled in with the remote working process, the larger question is how long can teams continue working remotely without a dip in productivity, and more importantly, employee engagement.

While a lot of business leaders are still reacting to operational changes they have had to implement in their business in light of the disruption caused by COVID-19, few of us have started thinking about the new normal that this pandemic will leave us with and how will businesses adapt to it.

Though it may sound counter-intuitive, now is the right time to invest in company-wide innovation efforts and drive some targeted activities to foster innovation. There are 2 reasons why you should be doing it:

1. There is going to be a wide-spread indelible economic impact on every business— There is no denying that there is going to be a permanent impact on every business because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the situation looks bleak today, we are going to bounce back. As a civilization and as an economy, we are going to turn a corner. And when that happens, the rules of the game will be different from what they were earlier. That means every business will not only have to adapt for survival but also identify new opportunities and quickly evolve to tap into those opportunities. Those who are going to start early are going to come out stronger. So while a majority of the teams work on ensuring business continuity, there is a need for a set of people to think about the world post the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on your business, and how to act immediately.
2. While creativity/output surges, engaging talent is harder when working remotely—What that means, #workfromhome is both a challenge and an opportunity. I have observed in HackerEarth itself that ever since we have been working from home, the individual output and creativity has increased, but it's harder to keep people engaged because there is no facetime. It's an absolute must that employees should be productively engaged, not just for business continuity but also because staying home all day with so much uncertainty around  can be extremely stressful. So if there is anything that can be done to meaningfully engage employees while leveraging greater collective creativity, it's a win-win.

Running internal innovation campaigns is an excellent way to address both of the above challenges. A great innovation campaign that can be run remotely is a hackathon. Hackathons are the perfect instrument to:

1. Harness the collective intelligence of your workforce
2. Crowdsource creative ideas for your business problems
3. Rapidly prototype solutions by bringing together a diverse set of teams
4. Increase employee engagement and facilitate inter-term collaboration

As you think through about coming out stronger in the post-COVID-19 world, hackathons are a powerful tool to address some key business challenges. Here's a guide that can help you in hosting the perfect hackathon.