When a company’s goals for employee development is tied with its own goals of innovation and change, the individual employee and the organization as a whole positively gain. When an employee is allowed to focus on areas not directly related to their immediate tasks, a process improvement may develop and at times, a new product. Essentially, when a company demonstrates encouragement for employee growth, intrapreneurship occurs; intrapreneurship refers to a system that allows an employee to act like an entrepreneur within a company. With an increase in such; internal assets of intrapreneurs are motivation, proactivity, and initiative to pursue an innovative product or service (Braunerhjelm, Ding, & Thulin, 2018). There have been many instances of product development when organizations allow their employees to work on related projects outside their core tasks such as 3M, Nokia, and Google.
Overall, by allowing and encouraging employees to seek career development, employees may increase morale, teamwork, productivity, and collaboration with various members of the company. Who doesn’t want a well oiled machine? If you don’t then you are odd.
Braunerhjelm, P., Ding, D., & Thulin, P. (2018). The knowledge spillover theory of intrapreneurship. Small Business Economics, 51(1), 1-30. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1007/s11187-017-9928-9
