Slashdot Log In
How To Encourage Workers To Suggest Innovation?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Feb 13, 2009 03:18 PM
from the participatory-employment dept.
from the participatory-employment dept.
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?"
Related Stories
Submission: How to encourage workers to suggest innovation by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Alcohol (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll also suggest a whole bunch of other, probably not so helpful stuff.
Like maybe residuals and royalties (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
i live in a town of 1000 people Walker [leech-lake.com] and work in a place that has 30 or so employees. Now while working on projects, we also have what the client wants, but there is always instances where there are different ways to do it. We have the chance to suggest ideas doing meetings about the projects, and our company is always taking suggestions about work env. etc
But the easiest thing to do, is just talk to your supervisor, "Hey, i have an idea about th
Re:Like maybe residuals and royalties (Score:5, Insightful)
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. )
Parent
Re:This is a good start (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Ownership interest (Score:5, Interesting)
That was easy.
Re:Ownership interest (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Ownership interest (Score:4, Insightful)
That was easy.
It's even easier than that. All you really have to do is convince your employees that their suggestion might actually get used, and most of them would be perfectly happy to make suggestions just for the bragging rights of being able to say "that was my idea". any kind of public recognition is a bonus, monetary compensation would be top notch, but is by no means necessary.
The company I work for, by contrast, makes it quite plain that our ideas are not only unwanted but that we should stop trying to waste their time with our ramblings. So be it.
-=Geoskd
Parent
Re:Ownership interest (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Parent
Re:Ownership interest (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
First idea (Score:5, Funny)
Criticism is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that you have to offer incentives to get employees to make suggestions seems to indicate your current environment is not conducive to suggestions. Rather than try and think of ways to get get employees more involved, you may want to be asking/posing the question to your superiors: Why aren't our employees more involved?
Re:Criticism is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Criticism is better (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Define innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Define innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
No, no. The'd rather spend the week making work schedules and powerpoint presentations and manpower allocation charts for the productivity idea, rather than actually doing the change. The time lost in the paperwork and bureaucracy are often so great that it's simply not worth the effort for minor, technologically or procedurally sensitive ideas because it has to go through 4 layers of management, all of them playing "telephone" and turning your idea for a safety switch into a complete sytem redesign, made by a new and unknown vendor who made a great presentation to people who know nothing about the field but spell their last name the same way as the company founder.
I saw this happen about 5 years ago: it was _amazing_ to watch the middle management burn the company to the ground with endless procedures and study groups, rather than knuckling down and doing the actually necessary work, and the results were evident in the handling of email and printers that I discussed with them as another business in the same building.
Parent
empowerment 20% of the time. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
What motivates people is recognition
Recognition doesn't pay the bills. If an idea that makes or saves the company money is rewarded with a healthy bonus, you're apt to get more suggestions than if you hand out a crappy paperweight and a slap on the back.
Parent
Re:empowerment 20% of the time. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:empowerment 20% of the time. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the problem with starting to financially reward people for their ideas, or to financially reward people for a job well done. Once you start doing it, you better keep doing it, otherwise the entire thing will fall apart. People will often complain at not getting raises, but it's infinitely worse if you give someone a raise one year, even if you carefully call it a bonus, and then if you stop paying that "bonus" that following year. So what was done by the employee for its own intrinsic value one year is only then done for its external reward -- every year after.
It's just like sex for instance, if a husband starts rewarding his wife for having sex with him, let's say by taking out the garbage, or by buying her expensive presents (just like in "Everybody loves Raymond"), he will be unwittingly conditioning her to only see sex as a chore, and a payment for a transaction -- not something to be done for its own intrinsic value. That is one of the reasons I believe that so many married couples in the United States eventually stop having sex with each other. In the US, sex for women is being portrayed as a currency of trade, or as a way to make babies, and not something to be done for its own sake.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to remember, however, that the value of money is not constant, due to inflation. Effectively, if your employer doesn't give you a raise, then they're actually giving you less money the next year as they did before. So if you're doing a good job, the employer really should give a raise equal to the inflationary rate, at a minimum, to show that they value you.
Employers have a nasty habit, due to this, of hiring new people in at more than experienced employees. It frequently pays well to change job
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I forgot to mention they recently cut back our patent reward program. There used to be awards for disclosure, filing, granted patents, bonuses for large numbers of patents (5x, 10x, etc.), trade secret awards, publication awards, etc. They cut all that back so now there's a single patent filing award and that's it. But they assure us they'll continue to provide a mechanism for recognition, even though we won't get any money. Yeah, I'm sure people will redouble their efforts in coming up with patentable
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With the way that most of these large companies work these days, that's actually not a big concern, at least not at an individual level. When these companies decide to get rid of people, they lay off entire teams and divisions. It's not really worthwhile to sift through employees and get rid of the average performers; it's a lot of work and time (which can be spent doing other work), and it's really bad for morale, and causes the best people to leave early on their own.
Of course, if you're a really horrib
Re:empowerment 20% of the time. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:empowerment 20% of the time. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Money (Score:2)
All I can think of is Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
Simple (Score:3, Funny)
"Ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has been only one answer to that question." -- Clarence Darrow
I don't understand the question? (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Human Resource Management is where the money is (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Give credit where credit is due (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Raffle? WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Accept some (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Partial ownership in the PATENT (Score:4, Insightful)
RE: Money go in or get out. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [joelonsoftware.com]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.
Air Force IDEA program (Score:3, Informative)
if my idea was good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Show respect, appreciation and follow up. Oh, and (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Pussy (Score:3, Funny)
Just stop doing whatever is INHIBITING them (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Prizes and Royalties (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re:Prizes and Royalties (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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/cons
Oh, I know, I know! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
What happens when your idea fails... Oh lets fire the janitor because his suggestion on how to improve productivity has failed.
That said rewarding a successful idea by bonus/raises/job security etc. Is a good way because it keep him part of the process not just a blank idea which could save the company millions and is sill struggling day to day.
Re:Prizes and Royalties (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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