Employee engagement is critical to the overall program success and one way of encouraging employee engagement is by asking for improvement ideas. Asking your team for improvement ideas:
- Increases engagement and morale: Employees are more motivated when they see their ideas taken seriously
- Leads to fresh perspectives: Employees on the frontline often have insights that leadership might miss; they feel the current pain points and know what could be done better
- Drives agility and adaptability: Organizations that encourage idea sharing are better equipped to pivot in response to challenges
When asking for ideas – you need to ensure that:
- You are open to ideas and feedback as an organization
- You give feedback on the idea
- You act on the idea if worth prioritizing and progressing or tell the idea contributor the reasons for putting the idea on hold
A key challenge when using an idea system over time is to maintain a steady inflow of ideas – some key tips to maintaining the flow:
- Celebrate wins, big and small with recognition and share success stories
- Provide consistent feedback – Employees need to know their ideas aren’t disappearing into a void. Even when suggestions aren’t feasible, providing thoughtful feedback shows that their input is valued
- Regularly update the improvement program with new themes, incentives, or formats to maintain employee engagement
If you’re successful as an organization, you’ll be able to both improve employee engagement and also have a ‘bank’ of potential improvement ideas that can be searched and actioned at any time.
