Fostering a Culture of Innovation with Ideas Cup
HCSS holds an annual competition on campus for employees willing to step outside their comfort zones and present the executive leadership team with the most innovative ideas they can devise.
“It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” – Steve Jobs
Evolving for the Customer
At HCSS, the heartbeat of our values centers around two fundamental pillars:
- Displaying a continuous growth mindset
- Being curious and proactive
These values aren’t buzzwords but guiding principles that steer our journey towards excellence. Nestled within these values is our ability to evolve, as seen in the pride and tradition of company events. Evolution and innovation are what keep us a step ahead, always building with you, the customer, in mind.
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As a technology leader with this culture at its core, HCSS internally holds the annual Ideas Cup, which celebrates both of these values in proving just how dedicated the company is to innovation. This event is where employees team up in groups of up to 4 people, think about user feedback, and brainstorm new features, functions, and tools that can help our customers take their business to the next level.
Beginning on the Friday morning leading up to the big day, each team works tirelessly through a 4-day stretch (including the weekend and Monday), fueled by that Tuesday deadline where they present their official 15-minute pitch to a trio of executives and then defend the idea in a brief Q&A. Business plans are developed to present the ideas, and some contestants even go so far as to start developing the tools.
The panel of judges is led by HCSS President and CEO, Steve McGough , accompanied by CFO Drew Thomas and CTO Mark Stewart . After concluding the day with a closed deliberation, winners are announced the following day, and the selected ideas are immediately put into action.
“It’s one of my favorite events of the year,” McGough says. “Numerous ideas are accepted annually, and we immediately prioritize them within our workflow to make significant improvements for not only our company but primarily our customer base.”
Continuing the Innovation
The Ideas Cup was first introduced in 2018, and a number of product updates have stemmed from this annual company event. In fact, many of the ideas that are presented at Ideas Cup are in response to the feedback given to HCSS from customers at the annual Users Group Meeting.
For example, a previous Ideas Cup winner introduced Employee Skills in QR codes, now an everyday feature used by customers. After this was proposed in 2019, HCSS presented customers of the HCSS Safety software with a hassle-free way to apply QR codes on workers’ helmets. All the foremen on jobsites need to do is scan these QR codes in order to pull up that individual worker’s skills and certifications.
Everyone who works in technology talks about innovation. There are a few key factors all tech companies have in common: striving to hire the most talented developers on the market, building the best roadmaps imaginable to support customers, and constantly releasing new features.
However, Ideas Cup goes beyond any roadmap or storytelling about innovation. The 13 teams that competed in 2024 compose a shining example of innovation in action – not just in day-to-day work, but in the very DNA of HCSS and its employees, with the outcome cultivating that continuous growth mindset.
Learn More
To learn more about what makes HCSS such an outstanding workplace for elite talent in the technology industry, check out the 2024 Best Places to Work.