How to Create an Employee Suggestion Program. The pitfalls of an ill- conceived employee suggestion program are multiple, legendary and most frequently - avoidable. A carefully constructed employee suggestion program, that is launched with organizational commitment, clarity and ongoing communication can positively impact your bottom line and your employee motivation and enthusiasm. An ill- conceived, hastily launched, undefined employee suggestion program can turn people off and generate ill will, cynicism and misunderstanding. Does Your Company Need an Employee Suggestion Program? Before launching an employee suggestion program, consider your corporate culture. Are you currently receiving fresh and thoughtful ideas? Are employee suggestions already percolating to the surface at staff meetings and in casual conversation? If so, maybe more informal methods for cultivating new ideas are warranted rather then a full- blown employee suggestion program. Perhaps you can schedule departmental brainstorming sessions or generate ideas about particular topics during portions of your weekly staff meeting. You can set a day a month for a luncheon at which every employee is asked to submit at least one idea. You can ask your managers to bring three employee ideas to each manager. HGTV Dream Home 2016 is. The HGTV Dream Home 2016 Master Bath Is a Masterpiece. It’s not at all simplistic just to choose to be making a gift of guidelines. Tweets from HGTV stars. Laurie March RT @USATODAY: The Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. How to Submit Show Ideas to Network Television. Television program idea. Submitting an idea to a television network may seem like a daunting task. Creativity serves you well in idea generation. If not, I? Will these issues continue to exist when you implement an employee suggestion program? If so, your successful employee suggestion program must eliminate or circumvent these road blocks. I am not traditionally a fan of employee suggestion programs since they are unwieldy, difficult to keep up with, time consuming, can cause more hard feelings than positive outcomes and must be strictly managed. Elements in a Successful Employee Suggestion Program. I have seen few employee suggestion programs succeed, but the employee suggestion programs that did succeed shared common success elements. You may take a pause at the number of factors I consider significant to the success of an employee suggestion program, but these are factors common to any successful work process that takes employee time and offers the possibility for significant rewards and recognition. If you pursue an employee suggestion program, the following must happen for success. Appoint a Cross- functional Suggestion Review Team. A cross- functional team must review the suggestions which must be acknowledged within 4. If this team is all managers, or all directors, it can be perceived as out of touch or blocking change. It will, however, have the power to implement the suggestions it receives. If it involves other employees, the process can be time- consuming and perceived to serve self- interests. Senior management agreement and ownership become a second step in the approval process. People on the team must be willing to change and willing to ask . If the managers or directors review suggestions, the review must be part of a regularly scheduled meeting, with suggestions distributed and considered in advance. If the team meets more often than monthly, it becomes more work than people are usually willing to do. Rotate members of this team 4- 6 times a year, but not all members at once, if a cross- functional employee team is your selected suggestion review vehicle. The choice of team members for the suggestion review team should reflect how business is generally accomplished in your culture. Here are more ideas for designing and administering an effective employee suggestion program - beyond the suggestion box. The process decided upon for the submission and review of suggestions in the employee suggestion program should be publicly communicated. Share all of the guidelines and especially, the goals that you are trying to accomplish, by starting an employee suggestion program. Establish Guidelines for Your Employee Suggestion Program. Creating Reality TV Concepts. Download free Hgtv Program Idea Submitting Guidelines software; White Lion Radar Love Rapidshare : Free Programs, Utilities and Apps. 12 X 16 Shed Foundation Ideas Submitting Shed Construction. Product Submission Terms & Conditions. Affiliate Program; AMERICAN DREAMS. Community Guidelines; Conditions of Use. You'll need to set guidelines such as which topics are open to suggestions. These will likely include ideas that affect cost savings, quality, productivity, process improvements, revenue- generation and morale- enhancement. Otherwise, as a client in Florida discovered when he promised $2. An employee suggestion needs to be more than a suggestion. It must provide some detail about how the proposer thinks the suggestion should be implemented. It is easy to dash off an idea, I would require that additional detail accompany the idea . At the same time, within these parameters, the suggestion process should be simple. I once knew a company that had a three page employee suggestion form whose managers wondered why they didn. At Toyota, millions of suggestions are generated each year. It is my understanding that the reason they have so many employee suggestions is that the employees are closely focused on improving their own jobs. The employee thinks of an improvement idea, shares it with his or her supervisor and then, if warranted, the idea is implemented immediately. There is no time- consuming process or group of managers that must consider most ideas. In this scenario, managers must be able to reward people who come up with ideas that fit the parameters of the program. More Guidelines for Your Successful Employee Suggestion Program. You need to designate an administrator for the employee suggestion program who will make sure the process moves as promised. A mid- sized Michigan manufacturing firm found itself with a list of over a hundred suggestions that were bogged down in a review committee that kept postponing meetings. What a morale buster for the people who had so hopefully turned those suggestions in for consideration! Publicly communicate the process decided upon with all of the guidelines and especially, the goals that you are trying to accomplish, by starting an employee suggestion program. Set guidelines such as the topics open to suggestions: cost savings, quality, productivity, process improvements, revenue- generating ideas and improved employee motivation and positive morale. A senior manager needs to champion the employee suggestion program and sit on the evaluation committee. This lends credibility to the employee suggestion program and makes suggesters feel important. Find ten more important . If the employee suggestion is a cost savings idea, in many employee suggestion programs, the employee receives a percentage of the cost savings: often this award can equal five- twenty percent of the proven cost savings. When thinking about your employee suggestion program, recognize that cost savings are hard to . So, often the first step in a cost saving suggestion implementation is to . Often, the recognition is most important to the employee. Rewards can include merchandise with the company logo, gift certificates, lunch with a manager of the employee's choice, a quarterly award dinner and points toward purchasing more expensive items from catalogs. Indeed, given the difficulty of measuring the outcome of many employee suggestions, some companies offer these recognition rewards even when the ideas added to the bottom line substantially. In my experience, this is not as motivating as the employee receiving a portion of the savings realized during a defined time period such as a year. Feedback in Your Employee Suggestion Program. Make the feedback to people with suggestions private, especially if the idea is rejected. Otherwise, people will be loath to stick their necks out by offering out- of- the- ordinary, and possibly your most fruitful, suggestions. On the other hand, when an employee suggestion is implemented and it results in a reward, I would publicly acknowledge the contribution at a staff meeting, with the permission of the employee involved. Additionally, you can post the employee suggestion, the names of the employees on the implementation team and the reward given. Keeping the employee suggestion program participants abreast of the progress of their suggestions in the program is more important than providing the suggester with quick answers. Employees just want to know what is happening with their ideas. In many organizations, suggestions seem to disappear into a dark hole from which they may not emerge for months - guaranteed failure for the employee suggestion program. A popular approach to suggestion implementation is to include the suggester on any implementation team. This also keeps the suggestions turned in reasonable. At minimum, if a suggestion is accepted, you need to have a timeline for implementation that the suggester is aware of and understands. More Pointers for Your Successful Employee Suggestion Program. Employee suggestion programs need to emphasize the quality of suggestions rather than the quantity of suggestions. Many programs encourage the opposite, which is one of the reasons people become so easily discouraged with them; they don't supply much bang for the money and time invested. I do not believe in anonymous employee suggestions. People should be willing to publicly stand behind their ideas. Will some employees not turn in suggestions? Probably, but ask yourself what kind of company do you want to create? Encourage organizational courage. Reward not just the employees who submit winning ideas. Reward and recognize the managers and supervisors who have done the best job of both encouraging employee suggestions and getting out of the way of progress. Consider including customers and suppliers as suggesters, too, especially as your employee suggestion program matures and is successful. I have seen many suggestion programs implemented in the past thirty years. Most failed because of the failure of the organizations to pay attention to these points. People tend to start ill- defined, fuzzy programs that fail to define rewards, implementation strategies and communication systems. People, who fail to get timely feedback, stop submitting ideas. If every idea becomes a . The process becomes a joke. How many empty suggestion boxes are sitting in companies in America? More than I care to count.
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