Slashdot Mirror
How To Encourage Workers To Suggest Innovation?
An anonymous reader writes "The software company where I work has an Innovation and Knowledge program that encourages workers to provide ideas for new products and suggestions to improve the work place, productivity or welfare. The ideas and suggestions are evaluated by a board that decides whether they should be implemented or not. The group of workers with more ideas participates in a raffle to receive a prize. I would like to know what other programs people have seen like this and how they differ. What is the best way to encourage workers to suggest new products to be made / researched by the company?"
They'll also suggest a whole bunch of other, probably not so helpful stuff.
That was easy.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Whatever you do, discard all first suggestions. They're all just wannabe first posters.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I think first companies need to make employees feel comfortable criticizing their superiors.
I think it's important to define what you are looking for.
At my company, we had a very similar project for a long time. I always thought innovation meant some incredible break through, or new product line. Turns out, some innovations that were accepted were changes to our coffee vendor, and tests for our new development folk (standard practice in my office, but considered innovative at one of our other sites.)
Had I know what the quality bar was at the beginning of the project, I would have submitted all kinds of stuff. As it was, I was just waiting for a really great idea.
Google let's their employees work on their own interesting side projects for 20% of their time. It's resulted in some of their best innovations. The employee is responsible for keeping the project up to date and Google owns it, obviously.
What motivates people is recognition.
Homer: [watching vending machine] Apple... Apple... Apple... come on, Candy Bar... [looking at an apple in the machine] Hey, I know you! You're that first apple I didn't want! That sinks it! I'm really gonna get let them have it this time! [writing on a notepad next to the suggestion box] No more apples in the vending machine PLEASE!! Then Mr. Burns gets it and reads it in a demeaning voice "Oh, don't worry, there will be plenty of apples in the vending machine."
God spoke to me.
Agree with that, at the very least the idea of a raffle for a prize pretty much sucks. So I come up with an idea that could save the company thousands, or even millions of dollars. and, I get a toaster oven. nice incentive.
Make it a percentage of the cost savings as a lump bonus and you'll not only get more suggestions, you'll get onces that actually have some thought and implementation plans put into them.
Wherever you go... There you are. B.B.
What is the best way to encourage workers to suggest new products to be made / researched by the company?
"Ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has been only one answer to that question." -- Clarence Darrow
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Your question is a little confusing - It's not clear to me whether you're asking for a mechanism for employees to make suggestions to 'improve the workplace' ("Gee it sure would be nice to have a ping pong table!") or a mechanism for them to make suggestions for feature improvements ("We should build a Linux version of your application!").
If it's the former, be careful. Generally, employee suggestions for workplace improvements cost money (real or perceived), be it "pizza Friday," a ping pong table or better telecommuting policies. Unless you have buy-in from upper management for a genuine $$$ budget for 'morale' these requests just to into a black hole, so why bother providing the mechanism? Make sure you have a budget first.
If it's the latter, I've never worked for a company yet that didn't have a shortage of employee suggestions of good ideas for a given product. Sales is full of suggestions. The tricky part is having a mechanism to evaluate & estimate those suggestions, build business cases and all that tricky stuff...
So I come up with an idea that could save the company thousands, or even millions of dollars. and, I get a toaster oven. nice incentive.
Not even. The company rewards you for your million-dollar idea by giving you a CHANCE to win a toaster oven. Gee, thanks.
How To Encourage Workers To Suggest Innovation?
1) Pay "workers" for each suggestion.
2) Ensure that each "worker" is made aware that the "worker" owns the ideas he submits to the company, and that the company will offer to license the ideas from the "worker" if Management deems the ideas "good enough" to implement
3) Ensure that the following are NOT offered as incentives: "raffles", "prizes" and (like one company I worked for offered, the "opportunity" to win the privilege of having breakfast with a Manager). This should be common sense for ANYBODY who has studied Management, the Social Sciences, Psychology, etc. But unfortunately the type of people who get into Human Resource Management don't usually have the brightest light bulbs.
Take cues from George Westinghouse instead of Thomas Edison. Edison screwed over Tesla who then took his genius to Westinghouse who then won the war of the currents.
Do they raffle off other benefits, like health care?
It has already been said -- if you want something of value from your employees, pay them for it. Thats how the whole "work" thing works.
Either pony up the cash or let them use the time they are already paid for to think about how to innovate.
It's very demoralizing when leaders encourage employees to proffer innovative ideas, and then basically ignores them. Or equally bad, shows favoritism in which ones are acted upon.
I can't imagine anything that would shut down employee participation faster than a sense that management isn't actually willing to act on them.
So I come up with an idea that could save the company thousands, or even millions of dollars. and, I get a toaster oven. nice incentive.
Not quite. Its a raffle, so you might get a toaster oven. Or you might not. Nobody knows! You're intrigued -- I can tell.
The biggest deterrent to getting ideas is to ignore advice. If you want to encourage employees to come up with new ideas make them feel like they are seriously listened too.
If I come up with an idea that the company patents, give me partial ownership of the patent. Otherwise I'm keeping my mouth shut until long after my contract expires. There is no incentive when I know the company is making millions and I only get a new iPod.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If you are considering the "money" suggestion you should probably keep the quirks of human psychology in mind. Excluding the stone-cold-homo-economicus types(who are fairly rare in practice), most people can be motivated for almost no money, or a good deal of money; but often won't be motivated by just a little money.
A lot of people voluntarily do valuable work, or come up with valuable ideas, for essentially no money, because there is something else that hooks them. Think Free Software people, various sorts of volunteers, people who do more than they need to at work, and so on. People will also, obviously, be motivated by large amounts of money(large being a relative measure).
The middle ground, though, can be a bad idea. People think about economic and non-economic activity differently. Somebody who would submit a linux kernel patch for free might well be insulted if they were offered rentacoder rates for their work. Somebody who will voluntarily suggest a valuable process improvement just because he takes pride in his work would probably not be pleased by a toaster. This is a somewhat interesting piece on the subject.
Either you create an environment that gives people the social warm and fuzzies(this includes paying decent money; but relies on social factors) or you give people real rewards to motivate them. Nobody on a professional salary is going to innovate for condescension and peanuts. They'll innovate because the environment is good and they want to, or for real money.
The US Air Force has the IDEA program that allows anyone who works for them suggest changes to anything. If that change ends up saving money, they cut a check for a percentage of that savings to the person/group who submitted the change.
i'd go out and start my own damn company, then interview my former boss for a position
ideas are power in the world of technology. asking your employees to give them to you for a fucking raffle (seriously?) is like buying the island of manhattan for trinkets. if my idea is good enough, i deserve a reward better than something akin to an "employee of the month" plaque at mcdonalds
but don't worry, you'll still get plenty of ideas. all sparse, vague, and minor: you get what you pay for
if you want a serious reply to your question, if you actually want good ideas that actually offers serious enough implications for your company's future OFFER THEM STOCK AND AN EQUITY STAKE
not a fucking raffle. frankly, your quesiton is insulting
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh lets fire the janitor because his suggestion on how to improve productivity has failed.
Corrected version:
Oh lets fire the janitor because his suggestion I have plagiarized on how to improve productivity has succeeded.
And I personally think that giving away bonuses would only increase tension and discrimination inside of teams.
I prefer simpler idea suggested above: permit to criticize management and their decisions. Ban on criticism is essentially what most often leads to disappearance of discussions. Healthy discussion is what drives innovation.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
An idea for a software program is not unlike an idea for a book, a poem, or a song. I suggest that if a company *really* wants innovation, that they offer 1% royalties that are not negated by loss of employment. That way, a good software developer may, after 10 or 30 years of coding, actually be able to retire.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
1. Respect their ideas and consider them.
2. If you implement an idea, reciprocate the value with appreciation and acknowledgment for everyone involved.
3. Follow up even on ideas you don't implement and express genuine appreciation for someone taking time out of their day and give you a free piece of advise.
4. Make it safe for people to suggest ideas that may be contrary to what upper management feels is right, convenient or is otherwise uptight about.
Make it a percentage of the cost savings as a lump bonus and you'll not only get more suggestions, you'll get onces that actually have some thought and implementation plans put into them.
I agree. If you give ideas of yours to your company and your work is not actually producing ideas, you should get a "royalty". The company should make sure that a proper mechanism exists to assign the idea a monetary value. Get accounting to produce numbers for it and give the person that came up with the idea a percentage of the money gained/saved during that time.
Ideally, a worker could retire if his idea is so good as to make loads of money for the company. At the end of the day that is an executive/consultant job. And this kind of people get showered in millions even when they fail miserably like in the current crisis.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I think the best thing a company can do is make the employee sign a contract that everything he thinks of belongs to the company. Doesn't matter if he thinks of it at work, or on the way to/from, or during Sunday School. And the inventor must never ever divulge or utilize his own idea in any context, except at work (if the employer decides to use it).
If that's not a sure-fire recipe for employees giving you their best ideas, then I don't know what is.
My company can have a few of my ideas, with no monetary compensation, because I know that ideas are useless without the means to execute them. I do not have the audience or the resources to do what they can. I could do nothing with that idea. I gain nothing by keeping it. If I give it away, and the company does it, either customers' lives, employees' lives, or the market is enriched. Why sit on it?
If it is an idea I can execute on my own, like a book plot, a startup site, or a new type of spoon, then yes, I'll keep it. However, how many of the ideas people would offer at work are really like that?
With that distinction made, the "Pay me for my idea that I can't actually make happen on my own" sentiment I am seeing modded +5 right now is in conflict with the Slashdot meme of "patents should expire for people who do nothing with them." In both cases, people want a reward for ideas they cannot execute. The difference is that patents actively stop other people from executing the ideas, but the underlying belief in both statements is still that an idea alone is worth something. Which is it?
Keep a couple easy HR girls that flirt entirely too much, and leave them with a date with Yatori in HR. Asian girl makes some totally inappropriate advances after dinner...
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Why is approval necessary? Why can't if an employee has a good idea he can't just do it without approval?
The persons who are often best able to judge whether an innovation is a good idea are those directly working in the area and often those at the bottom of the hierarchy. Forming a board of non experts to evaluate innovation is probably the best way to kill innovation. If you want to encourage innovation think about decentralizing your decision making.
Seriously, all of the responses here are good, but they address the symptom of your problem, not the problem.
Your problem is that you don't have a culture of innovation. You need to create a culture of innovation, to do that you need to fix some things.
1) You are doing performance reviews wrong. Don't feel bad, almost everyone is. Fix that.
2) Your workers think that innovation is optional and something that is a bonus. Innovation is an expected part of your job, and if you are not innovating you are not doing your job.
Grishnahk says, "Any innovative ideas I come up will be kept hidden until I'm out of here."
You need to convince people that the only way that they will succeed is if the company succeeds and you need to reward people when they do their job well. (See point #1) The Grishnahks of the world will constantly seek the workplace where mediocrity is tolerated. There are 500,000 new employees looking for jobs from last month alone. Get rid of Grishnahk.
3) Openness. People need to know that you got rid of Grishnahk and why. People need to know that you gave Mark's job to John because John worked harder and contributed more.
Do not tolerate substandard work. Expect innovation as a fundamental core of each persons job, not as a volunteer opportunity. Reward hard work with recognition.
*Portrayal of Grishnahk as a slacker was from a single statement and used for illustrative purposes only.
No special motivation is needed. If employees believe they are being listened to, they'll suggest ideas. Everybody has ideas about how to do things better, and everybody loves to talk about them.
I have no idea what the committees and prizes are about, but you may be sure your employees are getting a mixed message. If they are not producing ideas, it is because there is some other dynamic going on that is inhibiting them. You need to find out what that is and remove it, not fiddle around trying to oppose it with raffles and "recognition."
By the way, there's nothing so demotivating as seeing the people who won the plaques and the gift certificates get laid off.
For example, perhaps your company has a culture in which employees are told what to do instead of what goals are to be achieved, and punished if they achieve the desired goals in a manner different than prescribed. Employees quickly learn that procedure is everything, and that nobody wants to know a better but different way from getting from point A to point B.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why not try NOT having them sign a contract that says the company owns every idea that they have for the rest of their lives? Instead, any an all ideas should belong to the creator of the idea, unless they sell the rights to the company (this should be the employee's choise). The company can then evaluate the idea and if they use it, they have to pay a fee to the employee, plus 10% of any profits (if any) generated.
As someone who hates that clause in his contract, I do see the need for it.
W/ your model you run the risk of having a serious amount of litigation should there be some employee who feels that they worked on something that their company took from them. What constitutes the profits for your invention of a new door handle on a line of cars? Where do you calculate that percentage?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I'd say also stop treating the CEOs and upper management like gods. A company's success is the sum of its parts, and the way things are currently structured, I can't see a single thing that would motivate an employee to suggest ideas that would put a new yacht or summer home in the hands of someone else. Spreading the wealth would provide some real incentive.
Second, if the company's culture has its roots in political infighting and empire building, this kind of environment can't exist. It simply isn't worth the effort when the potential for good ideas to get crushed under the egos of incompetent management.
You are in a way right. Yet you are wrong.
Talk is air. Work is what drives innovation.
There are countless - failed - products around. Failed solely because people who did them didn't bothered to communicate with customers, releasing essentially gimmick nobody needs.
Healthy discussions with customers about shortcomings of a product, followed by inside discussions on why product ended up released in that way. That's how companies survive in long term: by making something others want to buy.
This entire discussion is a sign of poor hiring by the company involved. If they want innovative people they should hire innovative people. It isn't that hard - look for people who have done innovative things in the past and pay them money to work for you.
That's just plain stupid.
Sorry for the oxymoron, but all people are born innovative. True managerial talent is to get the innovative nature out of people for good of business.
General problem with hiring "innovative people" is that most of them can't keep on the same piece of work for very long time. Innovation is matter of a short moments. End product - is thousands person/days of many many employees. Few truly innovative people can stick to the business routine. And very few companies go to compromise and provide innovative people with sort of isolated environment - where they are isolated from usual business routine related to making of a product.
The rest is just common sense: give them the responsibility and resources to achieve change, think twice before screwing them over, and expand the scope of their resources (personal or departmental) as they deliver results.
That's common sense. Yet your base off by far.
Responsibilities is what used to keep people in check. Yet, not much people are capable of bearing responsibilities. If one can - then they'd likely to choose managerial career. That means rest of "innovative" bunch is precisely the people who can't manage, can't cope with responsibilities and rarely can work under pressure. In other words - rest of us, employees.
That's why proper communication with employees is needed. General problem that many managers can't cope with critique of their decisions. Eventually any kind of critique falls under unwritten ban leading to dried up communication within company.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.