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| Suggestion
Program Objections by Jim Collison |
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Three objections keep an employer from launching a suggestion program or from reinvigorating a dormant program. The major objections I hear are these: (1) Administering a suggestion program takes up too much management time to evaluate and implement all the ideas submitted. (2) Most employees won’t participate and employees won’t submit enough suggestions to justify the time and effort. (3) Giving awards to employees for their suggestions is too expensive. My experience
with our WOW™ suggestion program at Employers of America –
and all I’ve learned about the best suggestion programs |
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during more than 25 years of investigating successful ones – convinces me that these objections are not valid. Employee Idea Examples Take the first objection, that administering the program is too time-consuming for management. I know how much time it takes because, with our small staff at Employers of America, I’m the administrator of the WOW™ program. My records show that I spend an average of 15 minutes per submitted idea administering, evaluating and implementing ideas. Some examples of employee ideas in a suggestion program: * The suggestion:
To sell our membership and The Complete Employee Handbook Made Easy
as a package, on our Web site, with a discount offer. Within 24
hours of the offer being placed * The suggestion: Replace business reply envelopes with plain envelopes mailed out with invoices and membership renewals, saving 63¢ for each business reply envelope not returned. We monitored returns of payments in envelopes for a month and learned that almost all checks come to us in the check writer’s own window envelope. So we ended use of the business reply envelope, saving about $150 a year. Administration and evaluation time: less than 10 minutes. * The suggestion: Switch from using bubble wrap to using foam sheets to protect manuals in shipment. Estimated savings: $1,500 a year. Administration and evaluation time: About 20 minutes. (A year later we changed the size of the shipping cartons to eliminate the need for the foam sheets, saving an additional $720 year.) More Suggestion Program Objections As for the second objection, employees will give you their ideas. All you have to do is ask them, and ask them often. You also have to respond to their suggestions quickly. And you have to thank them and reward them. About rewards, the third objection. The rewards don’t have to be expensive. In fact, they should not be. At Employers of America, we award $1 for each idea submitted and a $10 gift certificate for each idea adopted. The most important reward is the recognition and appreciation the employee receives when the awards are given in staff meetings. Do you have objections to having a suggestion program? Do you keep putting off starting a suggestion program? If so, answer
this question: “How much money is our business losing each
day that we put off launching one?” |
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