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?"

Comments

Alcohol

[Reality Master 201]

They'll also suggest a whole bunch of other, probably not so helpful stuff.

Ownership interest

[HBI]

That was easy.

Re:Ownership interest

[DrLang21]

A company I used to work for was really into Kaizan. They did profit sharing, and a metric in deciding how much was received in profit sharing was Kaizan participation. It resulted in a lot of dull ideas, but the shear mass of input resulted in a number of good ideas on a pretty regular basis.

Re:Ownership interest

[lgw]

It's common in "real" engineering contexts to reward the suggester with a percentage of the value of the idea. For example, a chemical plant might have a suggestion box (anyone can contribute, engineer or not) for lowering the cost of the plant's processes. For any idea they use they'll pay you 10% of the money saved, capped at $1 million. This is actually fairly common, and most plants have a history of large payouts.

Ownership doesn't come into it: no one's getting stock. But a $1 million check is still a great motivator. You just need a reward proportional to the value of the idea, plus a clear way to establish ownership of suggestions (the second guy to suggest the $1 million idea is going to be annoyed).

Re:Ownership interest

[stephanruby]

For any idea they use they'll pay you 10% of the money saved, capped at $1 million. This is actually fairly common, and most plants have a history of large payouts.

Ideas are cheap. What you need to pay for is the idea *and* the drive to get it implemented. And where it comes to implementation, you need to reward the entire group/team, not just the individual, otherwise people will be working on ideas in isolation from each other, and your colleagues will be more interested in shooting down your ideas than helping you with them.

Just imagine our k-12 educational system, the children with ideas get rewarded by the teachers, but they have to work in isolation from each other, and often their classmates won't help them -- their classmates will ignore them, or even worse ostracize them, for trying so hard. Now compare this to a team sport for instance, like American football, when a student helps win a trophy for his team/his school, the entire school benefits, but everyone on that team/school knows who is, or who are, the individual(s) of the team that helped get the school that trophy, so that/those individual(s) get rewarded by increased personal prestige and increased social status (at least, within the microcosm of that school).

In Japan, this is essentially how Edward Demings taught it, and this is essentially how the Japanese have implemented it. Toyota workers do not get rewarded individually. The team gets rewarded first, then whoever came up with the idea gets recognized as the super-star (at least, within his team/group). Now this does not mean that competition doesn't play an important role in there either, it indeed does, but that competition and that recognition is often promoted between the teams and between the groups, and never between individual members of the same team.

First idea

[srussia]

Whatever you do, discard all first suggestions. They're all just wannabe first posters.

Criticism is better

[Sigvatr]

I think first companies need to make employees feel comfortable criticizing their superiors.

Re:Criticism is better

[bigstrat2003]

The employees are extremely comfortable doing this. It's the superiors who need some work here.

Define innovation

[Gribflex]

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.

empowerment 20% of the time.

[neo]

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.

Re:empowerment 20% of the time.

[morgan_greywolf]

I'm going to reply to this post backwards if you don't mind.

What motivates people is recognition.

That's one of the things. A guy named Frederick Hertzberg suggested that employees are motivated by a hierarchy of needs.

They start at the very low levels: Physical Environment, Salary, Job Security, Status, etc.

Then they proceed to higher levels. Recognition is actually the second highest motivator, and it certainly is a motivator for some. But Google is actually a good example of Hertzberg's highest motivator which is achievement: people are motivated by the work itself. Self-actualization.

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.

Google's employees get to pitch side projects and suggest them to management. IOW, they get to work on what interests them. They are motivated by the actual work. Real Google products started as side projects.

Re:empowerment 20% of the time.

[Grishnakh]

At my current employer, all we get is the slap on the back. Because of the bad economy, there's no chance for a raise or bonus, but they've sent us all an email asking us to please continue working hard and coming up with innovative ideas. Yeah, right.

Any innovative ideas I come up will be kept hidden until I'm out of here.

Re:empowerment 20% of the time.

[An. (Coward)]

A guy named Frederick Hertzberg suggested that employees are motivated by a hierarchy of needs.

They start at the very low levels: Physical Environment, Salary, Job Security, Status, etc.

Then they proceed to higher levels. Recognition is actually the second highest motivator, and it certainly is a motivator for some. But Google is actually a good example of Hertzberg's highest motivator which is achievement: people are motivated by the work itself. Self-actualization.

That was Abraham Maslow.

All I can think of is Simpsons

[CrazyJim1]

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."

Re:Prizes and Royalties

[DragonFodder]

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.

Human Resource Management is where the money is

[unlametheweak]

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.

Accept some

[DoofusOfDeath]

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.

RE: Money go in or get out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Like maybe residuals and royalties

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Re:Like maybe residuals and royalties

[gutnor]

Nice in theory. In practice that will just become like the US patent system: you will have people submitting tons of general ideas that will prevent other employee to submit "derivative" ideas and/or could interfere with the company already ongoing projects.

Also idea as you said, idea for software program are like ideas for books, poem, ... Meaning they are very common and worthless, without huge effort.

If you want innovation - you can pay for it in another way. Just give time and resource to your employee to pursue some of their ideas. When you see something concretely good taking shape, reward your employee by upgrading his pet project into a company project and give him some career opportunity on it.

That will cost the company the same (or more), but without the side effect of the patent system.
That seems to work alright at google. ( but well google is full of cash right now, so difficult to say how beneficial is this approach in the long term in less profitable times. )

Re:This is a good start

[symbolic]

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.