6 Steps to Start an Employee Suggestion Program: Steps 5 & 6

the victoryThis is the fifth and final post in our series on how to establish a successful Employee Suggestion Program (ESP). We’ve based this series in part on the book Employee Driven Quality.

Our last post covered Step 4: Pilot for Your Employee Suggestion Program.

In this post, I will cover steps 5 and 6: Rolling Out Your Employee Suggestion Program, and Continuous Improvement. Let us take a look at these steps one at a time.

Step 5: Rolling Out Your Employee Suggestion Program

Once your ESP is fully developed and tested through your pilot, it is ready for organization-wide roll out. Make sure to inform your employees of the success of the pilot and build enthusiasm before the rollout.

Train for Success

Training your employees before the rollout is essential to a successful rollout. Focus training on your idea makers, managers, coaches, and installers.

Use Your Pilot Successes

Remember, success fuels success. If your ESP worked in one area of your organization, employees will be more likely to appreciate it in their own department. To inspire your employees:

  • Give specific examples of implemented employee ideas
  • Share participation and implementation statistics
  • Share positive feedback from focus groups

Once your organization implements your ESP, the next step is to make sure to measure it and continuously improve it.

Step 6: Continuous Improvement

Before you can improve your ESP, it is important to measure the results.

Measure the Success of your ESP

Here are some metrics you can measure for your Employee Suggestion Program:

  • Total Ideas Submitted
  • Ideas Per Employee
  • Idea Submission Rate – What percentage of your employees have submitted an idea?
  • Participation Rate – What percentage of your employees have participated (submit idea, vote for idea, comment on ideas, etc) in your ESP?

Continuously Improve Your ESP

Once you establish your ESP, make sure to continuously measure the success and improve!

If your ESP isn’t meeting your goals, find out why. If your ESP is reaching your goals, raise the bar even higher.

I hope you enjoyed this series on how to implement your own Employee Suggestion Program.  I hope it gives you the ideas necessary to build a successful ESP that can offer your organization many benefits.

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Laura Daniele

Hello, I'm your author, Laura Daniele. I spend a lot of my time researching the best practices for Employee Suggestion Programs, and writing articles to share them. I hope you find them helpful! I work at Accompa - one of our products is IdeaGlow Employee Suggestion Program Software.

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