Looking for a way to increase employee engagement at your organization? Is devising a plan to foster innovation also on your agenda? Are you also searching for an idea to improve communication?
What if I say I have the 3-in-1 solution for you? and it happens to be a box. Not just any other box, but the employee suggestion box. What is it? Well, an employee suggestion box is a box that you have installed in your workspace where employees can share their ideas to improve a certain aspect or solve a particular problem of the organization.
This happens to be a great idea because it lets you tap into the minds of employees who are aware of a situation at ground level and thus are better disposed to come up with solutions that actually work!
What is interesting is that these regular employee suggestion boxes have undergone a metamorphosis in most organizations. You are now less likely to see these box thingies and more likely to find employee suggestion forms. Even more interesting is how these suggestion boxes came to be. Curious? Let’s dive in.
Origin of the employee suggestion box
Well, the legend goes that in 1721, the 8th shogun, i.e., a military ruler of Japan, placed a box at the entrance of the Ido Castle to ask for suggestions from his people. In a similar replication of the idea, but this time in a working environment, the British Navy in 1770 ran an employee suggestion programme to ask for ideas to improve the working conditions.
But then something happened.
The suggestion box started to disappear in organizations that had it with the same intentions as the above two.
What does that tell us? Simply having a suggestion box in place is not enough.
That brings us to the question, "So, what must I do to ensure it is a success?"
We have you. Go through the 10 points below to understand how you can turn the obsolete feedback box into a successful one.
10 ways to have an effective employee suggestion box
1. Review previous attempts.
Now, it is highly likely that there was a feedback box in place in some form or another. If it wasn’t, skip to the next point.
If it were, your first job would be to find out why it didn’t work.
- Was it because it was not marketed well?
- Was it because employees shared their ideas but did not receive any feedback?
- Was it because the company did not have a sponsoring committee in place?
Look for the loopholes and identify actions to fix them.
2. Ensure awareness.
So, you are planning to get a suggestion box in place or bring back the existing one. The first task on your list must be to market it well. Make sure your employees are aware that a feedback box exists. Make the employee suggestion box a point to discuss during the onboarding process to ensure all new employees are aware of it.
Another effective way you can remind your people of it is by asking them to write suggestions for a problem that is affecting the company but has not been solved yet. It could be about how to create a need for a product among consumers. And some genius employee could come up with a marketing idea that could turn around the sales!
3. Include important questions.
The thing is, only asking for suggestions is not enough, Brian. You must have a list of questions in your employee suggestion form that is not long and does the job. If you are using an employee suggestion box, make sure your employees know the format in which the suggestions must be submitted.
The answers to these questions will ensure that the contributor of the idea does their homework before submitting the idea and that you too have the required information in hand to consider its possibility.
Look at the questions on the employee suggestion form I created on Sup Bot.
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4. Designate a diverse review team.
Yes, it is important to have financiers and higher management on your review team. But are they enough? Certainly not. Why so? Many times, the idea that you receive may be in a raw form that can be refined with a little refinement and modification.
Having people from different departments helps with this. Imagine a possible solution going to the trash can simply because you and the financiers could not come up with an idea to make the idea work. How terrible would that be?
5. Hold monthly review meetings.
So, you have a feedback box in place with an incoming stream of ideas. Good going. Now, the question arises: how often should it be viewed? A doable frequency would be monthly.
Let the ideas come in and be collected for a month, and then hold a monthly review meeting to go through each and discuss the possibilities. Sup lets you generate a report of all responses, so you can easily go through them one by one.
6. Make use of polls
Let’s say not all members of the review team are on the same page regarding a particular idea in the suggestion box. What do you do? Do you keep it for future discussion? No, not a good idea. Because any idea that is delayed has a 50% chance of being denied execution.
The way out? Create a poll! Similar to how you upvote or downvote a video on YouTube, you can let your employees across the organization decide if the idea is good to go or not. See how you can create a poll here.
7. Inform approval of considered ideas.
Imagine this. You submit a suggestion enthusiastically into the employee suggestion box. It has been more than a month. You don’t know if your idea is even being considered. You submit another suggestion and experience the same again. How would you feel? Discouraged, right?
To avoid your employees feeling discouraged about using the suggestion box, make sure they know that they will be notified if their ideas are being considered for implementation, even if the execution takes time.
Sup lets you use approval flow for its forms, where you can easily let the idea contributors know if their ideas are being considered.
This is the message the contributor will receive if you have notified them.
8. Follow-up on executed ideas
All said and done, your employee suggestion box will not be a success if you do not follow up on the ideas that were executed. Every effort that is shown towards the programme goes into building the employees’ trust in the programme and, consequently, the management.
So let’s say you installed lighting in the office parking lot based on a suggestion received in the employee suggestion form. Is the light pole working fine? Or is it giving you trouble? Your installation of a light pole will not yield the desired results if it does not work properly, making the employees grimace at and doubt your execution efforts.
9. Consider the anonymity of responses.
This truly depends on how well you have been able to build trust among your employees. If you have successfully assured your employees that no action will be taken against them for submitting a particular idea, you may not need to consider this feature for your feedback box or employee suggestion forms.
But if you think that employees will be able to share more openly if responses are made anonymous, you can do so using Sup!
Sup! lets you make use of the anonymous response feature in every form you create.
10. Reward successful ideas.
The reinforcement theory in psychology states that behaviour that receives positive reinforcement has a higher chance of being repeated. This reinforcement can be both verbal and non-verbal.
Why do I share this with you? Because I went nuts and jumped topics? No, because this theory comes in handy when you want to encourage the behaviour of using the employee suggestion box or the employee suggestion form.
The rewards accorded to a contributor to a great idea could be recognized during an all-hands meeting or even a company-sponsored trip! When employees understand their input is being recognized and awarded, they are more likely to come up with ideas and be more engaged in the success of the company.
Let me show you how these considerations helped two of the most successful companies flourish further.
Examples of successful employee suggestion box programmes
1. Amazon Prime
We all know someone who is, or we ourselves have been, an Amazon Prime member. But are you familiar with the backstory?
Back in 2004, Amazon was reeling under its competitors like eBay. This was when an engineer working at Amazon was genuinely frustrated with the Super Saver Shipping they offered then-a free shipping service from Amazon-after having reached a certain amount on the cart that would deliver your goods within 8–10 days. Why was he frustrated? Because it was complex on the backend.
So, he suggested allowing customers to pay a certain amount at the beginning of the year, after which all their orders would qualify for free delivery. Jeff Bezos refined the idea further to add faster shipping. And today, it is the Prime members who add more revenue to the organization than the non-Prime members, eliminating all competition.
2. IBM
In 2005, the multinational technology corporation started using internal software, ThinkPlace, to drive innovation and idea management. It allowed its employees to give suggestions or even ask questions. The ideas were then promoted to a board of executives called the Ideas to Reality board, which then selected the ones to be executed.
The intention to see employees as innovators and the software both led to over 500 implemented ideas in a span of 3 years, improving the company multifold.
In light of these facts,
It will be unwise not to have an employee suggestion form in place. What will be more unwise is not running it effectively, even when you have one in place.
You now know what you must keep in mind if you want to make your employee suggestion programme a success. And if you ask us for a suggestion for the right tool to execute it, we’d say, don’t look beyond Sup Bot That’ll be all, folks.
Frequently asked questions
1. What is an employee suggestion box?
An employee suggestion box is a tool, either physical or digital, where employees can anonymously or openly submit ideas, feedback, or suggestions to improve various aspects of the workplace or address challenges within the organization. It encourages open communication and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.
2. What to ask in a suggestion box?
Questions to ask in a suggestion box:
- 1.How can we improve our workplace environment?
- 2.How can we enhance team collaboration?
- 3.Do you have new product ideas?
3. How to collect ideas from employees?
You can collect ideas from employees using Sup Bot, which makes the process easy and organized. Employees can share their suggestions through Sup Bot, and it automatically tracks and manages these ideas, ensuring nothing gets missed. Plus, it allows for anonymous submissions. This way, employees can share their suggestions without any hesitation, encouraging more honest and open feedback.
4. How do you announce an employee suggestion box?
You can announce an employee suggestion box by sending an email to all employees, clearly outlining its purpose, how it works, and the value of their input. Alternatively, you can introduce it at an all-hands meeting to create immediate awareness and emphasize leadership’s commitment to listening to employees. Adding options like anonymous submissions, possibly through tools like Sup Bot, can further encourage participation.
