How an Employee Suggestion Program Can Make Your Employees Happier

March 18, 2013 By

Happy employeesIt’s a tricky question.

Do bonuses & cash rewards keep employees happy? Or is there a better way to motivate employees?

Reward Schemes for Routine vs. Non-Routine Roles

Bonus schemes may motivate employees depending on whether their role is routine or non-routine. Factory jobs are often routine – they may not require a lot of initiative. The same may be true for certain basic administrative roles.

More and more jobs in our economy, however, are non-routine: creative jobs, engineering jobs, marketing and sales jobs, etc. These jobs often require creativity, expertise, and self-motivation.

In his fascinating book Drive, Daniel Pink argues that reward schemes [Read more…]

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3 Reasons to Encourage Small Ideas in Employee Suggestion Programs

January 22, 2013 By

A lot of companies believe that they need big ideas to have a successful employee suggestion program. Fortunately, it’s not true!

chick in eggSmall ideas can be very powerful. How can that be?

There are at least 3 reasons:

  1. Small Ideas Promote Innovation Culture
  2. Small Ideas Lead to Big Ideas
  3. Small Ideas Can Be Implemented Quickly

Let us take a detailed look into each of these reasons.

1. Small Ideas Promote Innovation Culture

Encouraging employees to share small ideas can help a company build a strong innovation community & culture.

Without much thought, employees can come up with small ideas as they work on their daily tasks.

Something is wrong if workers do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures. Even last month’s manual should be out of date.
– Taiichi Ohno, the “father” of the Toyota production system.

When your company is open to small ideas [Read more…]

Filed Under: Employee Suggestion Program, Innovation Management Process

Simple Ways to Publicize Your Employee Suggestion Program

January 8, 2013 By

promote employee suggestion programYour employee suggestion program is in place but employee involvement needs a boost for you to truly reap the benefits. What’s a straight-forward way to do this?

Publicize it!

Publicizing your employee suggestion program will create employee awareness and attract their attention. For one company, publicizing their employee suggestion program increased participation by 350%!

Here are some simple ways to promote your employee suggestion program and increase employee involvement.

[Read more…]

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Employee Suggestion Programs – Benefits of Seeking Ideas on One Topic

December 19, 2012 By

In this blog post, I want to share one thing that can make your employee suggestion program way more successful. What is it?

Seeking ideas and solutions from employees on one specific topic. How so?

Many employee suggestion programs seek ideas from employees without a clear focus or goal. Employees then submit ideas about anything and everything.

The problem with having no focus is…

[Read more…]

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5 Tips to Tap Employee Ideas & Build an Employee Suggestion Program

December 14, 2012 By

“Would your employees act differently if they actually owned your company…?” – Bilbrey and Jones (Ordinary Greatness: It’s Where You Least Expect It…Everywhere)

Innovative ideas drive a company’s success.

Whether it is creating new products, improving existing products, or finding more efficient workflows, innovation keeps a company at the forefront. So where do these innovative ideas come from and how can you tap into them?

A very important source of innovative ideas is: Employees. How so?

[Read more…]

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