This weekend is the Labor Day holiday in the United States when we pause to honor all those who work. According to the U.S. Department of Labor website this holiday is "a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country". The "Arther D. Little Innovation Excellence Study" of 2005 showed employee innovation ideas in a single area can lead to as much as a 7.9% increase of sales.

Soliciting innovation from your employees pays dividends in many ways. It can increase your sales, profits, and your employee satisfaction. The Employee Involvement Association reports from its research that nearly 50% of employees will identify and implement improvement ideas. It is when these ideas are not responded to that employees disengage from the process.

Jennifer Rosenzweig wrote an article entitled "Rethinking Innovation: Employees as R&D Assets" in the latest 1to1 magazine. She suggests 3 elements that need to be present for employees to make a difference.

1. Priority Status - You must advertise for suggestions and reward those that meet customer needs.
2. Accessibility - You make suggestions easy to submit. There needs to be a system that makes these ideas visible to management so that they can be evaluated for merit, creativity, and alignment with corporate goals.
3. Measurability - The participation and implementation of all ideas needs to be tracked.

How is your employee innovation program going?

Submitting improvement ideas needs to be fast, easy and transparent. It also needs to have meaningful recognition. A web based system that can be accessed from any computer, tracked contributions, awarded points for ideas and reported on the impact of the ideas would be ideal.:)
Like the one at www.ideascount.com