Cashing in on ideas

SUGGESTION SCHEMES

Cashing in on ideas

Staff suggestion schemes can bring rich rewards for employers and employees, research published in IRS Employment Review shows.

IRS found that although most suggestion schemes offer cash or gifts to reward good ideas -- anything up to £1,000 for the best ideas in some companies -- employers believe that their staff place more value on the recognition they receive for their efforts.

While some suggestion schemes fail to engage employees and are eventually closed down, others engage employees and produce rewards for employers in terms of higher sales, more efficient ways of working, and lower costs, says IRS. And almost all organisations that run suggestion schemes -- as many as 96% of survey respondents -- hope to achieve greater staff involvement, with service improvements (cited by 84%) close behind.

Key results

Among the key survey findings are these:

Asked to put an annual value to the company on their suggestion schemes the top three were: Siemens Standard Drives -- suggestion scheme value £750,000 Pfizer -- £250,000 Chessington World of Adventures -- £50,000.
Most employers rewarded their staff with gift vouchers, cash or non-monetary gifts.
Few of the successful schemes identified in the IRS survey were more than three or four years old.
Of respondents without a suggestion scheme, 67% said that it was because they involved employees in other ways.
The lack of time or resources to run a scheme was cited by 43% of respondents.
Of the employers that had previously run a scheme unsuccessfully, 15% thought employees would resist the idea and 6% anticipated no organisational benefits.
A quarter of respondents (25%) currently without a suggestion scheme plan to introduce one in future.

A final word

"You don't have to be Einstein to have a good idea, but it takes a good manager to recognise a staff suggestion that can improve a company's performance and put it into practice. For some people, suggestion schemes are associated with the suggestion box that sits empty and ignored on the canteen wall -- an unwanted, token attempt at employee involvement, destined to achieve nothing much. But our research reveals that this is not always the case. Staff suggestions can make a substantial difference. But it requires effort on the part of employers to keep the suggestion scheme live. The best schemes deal with suggestions quickly and efficiently, implement those that are worth doing, and make sure the effect is measured and fed back to managers and employees." -- Mark Crail, managing editor, IRS Employment Review.

Want to know more?

Title: "Employee suggestion schemes: an idea whose time has come", IRS Employment Review 813/Employment Trends, 10 December 2004.

Survey sample: The survey, which was conducted in October 2004, is based on information received from 89 public and private sector organisations in the UK, of which 25 operate suggestion schemes.

Availability: To purchase this eight-page survey contact the subscriptions department at IRS in London, tel: 020 8686 9141 or visit www.irsemploymentreview.com

Posted 11 January 2005