Background information

The Innovation Toolkit is a service designed to enable a one or more employees to participate in a questionnaire on Employee Engagement, Innovation, Productivity and Training approaches. It is open to any business, from either the private or public sector and is supported by major representative bodies and organisations, including IDA Ireland, ICTU and Ibec.

The Toolkit is supported by the Department of, Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Local Enterprise Offices, Ibec, ICTU, SIPTU, Forsa and Unite, IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Skillnet Ireland, Ideas Institute, Workplace Relations Commission and NSAI.

Further information is available here and here

Content of measure

It is a diagnostic toolkit that is accessed through an online questionnaire of 25 questions, designed to facilitate self-evaluation of the organisation's capacity to be an innovative workplace. It is designed around four pillars: employee engagement, innovation, productivity and training.

Its objectives are:

• To encourage businesses to take a proactive approach to improve their performance and work practices.
• To develop a practical approach to assist all businesses and their workforces to identify where there is scope to improve, become more resilient and sustainable, enhance skills, and help maintain and create employment.
• To signpost businesses to the relevant supports to improve their workplace practices leading to improved business performance.

The toolkit produces two reports: a personalised report for each individual respondent, and a company report (generated only if there are 2 or more respondents).

The company report will show the average result for the company’s individual respondents. It provides the basis to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the business and can be used to start the conversation on how best to enhance the business’s capability to prepare, adapt and respond to change and move closer to best practice.

The personal report enables individual respondents to assess their strengths and weaknesses under the four aforementioned pillars.

It has received support and encouragement from the social partners, at peak and lower level.

Use of measure

There are no available evaluations/reviews of how the toolkit has performed since its launch in 2018.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Employees in standard employment	Applies to all businesses	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
National government Local / regional government	No special funding required

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	Consulted	Consulted
Form	Any other form of consultation, institutionalised (as stable working groups or committees) or informal	Any other form of consultation, institutionalised (as stable working groups or committees) or informal

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Social partners jointly
• Main level of involvement: Peak or cross-sectoral level

Involvement

Trade unions and the peak social partners were involved in the formation of the Workplace Innovation Toolkit.

Views and reactions

While the social partners were supportive of the Toolkit there is no known update on their views on how the Toolkit is working.

Sources

• 01 January 2018: DBEI (2018), Action Plan for Jobs 2018 (dbei.gov.ie)