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The benefits of asking employees for suggestions are numerous, for example: a) profits and margins are boosted by efficiency and productivity improvements; b) employee engagement levels rise; and c) morale and team spirit soars. If your company/organization does not have any kind of suggestion program going right now, you can get something going this week. Here are the steps you need to follow:

You’ve got the (free) template…. now what?

We’ve identified 6 steps that you should take to get your employee suggestion program going:

1. What’s the goals of the scheme? Write down the targets and make a record of the current situation – how many suggestions are coming in now (if any) and how are they being received. A benchmark to judge the success of the scheme is essential.
2. How will you obtain the suggestions from your staff? I guess we’re bound to say this, but an Online Suggestion software system like Vetter, might be the quickest route. The paper suggestion method might work too, especially if you’ve got an Administrator who can spare time each month sorting through the suggestions.
3. Next you should think about how you’ll launch the scheme. If the launch is executed well.. you should be off to a flying start. Employees want to see that their suggestions are being reviewed by management quickly and then implemented. Rewards are a tricky one – we recommend recognition in the company newsletter or a $50-100 gift voucher. We do not recommend giving employees a % of the resulting savings or profits, from the idea. Be sure to record the employees overall suggestion count and bring it up during their annual evaluation and performance review.
4. Launch with a Bang! Convince the boss to submit the first suggestion and employees will soon follow suit.
5. Celebrate and reward the winners, appreciate them, they deserve it!

What kind of organizations might benefit from using this template?

• Local and State governments
• Semi-state bodies and Industry groups
• Brick and Mortar stores
• Education providers - High Schools, Colleges
• Telecoms
• Power & Energy companies
• Insurance and Financial companies

Finally, here’s a couple of jaw-dropping results form employee engagement idea schemes:

Finally here are some a big money example of the type of success that can occur:

• British Airways saved an estimated $625,000… By switching from glass miniature liquor bottles to plastic miniature liquor bottles back in 1984. This equates to over $1.3 mn in today's money.
• Siemens saves over £60,000 by using stainless steel: A suggestion from Siemens’ employee Emma Akerman to make a component out of galvanized steel rather than stainless steel was adopted and lead to savings of over £60,000 a year at one of the German giant's UK factories.



You cannot improve one thing by 1000% but you can improve 1000 little things by 1% – management guru Tom Peters




Written by Duncan Murtagh March 15, 2014

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