Working Miracles at Work: Ask Employees for Ideas By Jim Collison, President, Employers of America The quickest and simplest way to work miracles in your workplace is to ask your employees for their ideas. And the smartest, most effective way to get the most ideas from your employees is with a formal employee involvement or a suggestion program). Employees’ brains are usually loaded with ideas that would reduce tensions…improve customer service and customer loyalty…and continuously improve the quality of products and services. Amazingly, most employers refuse to launch an employee idea and suggestion program. Or if they do, the suggestion program sputters along and then employee involvement languishes or dies. Surveys of employee suggestion programs consistently report that the annual savings from ideas submitted in active suggestion programs average from over $700 to more than $1,000 per employee per year. This means that an organization with 50 employees and an active suggestion program can save over $35,000 a year from ideas submitted by employees. Most of these ideas generate savings year-after-year. So the cumulative value of ideas over time is substantially greater than the $35,000. Direct cost-cutting, money-saving ideas make up only part of all the ideas employees can offer. Organizations also use suggestion programs to generate employee ideas to improve quality, to improve morale, to add to product lines, and to improve safety.

The powerful tool for creating and managing a complete employee involvement / suggestion program

Idea-Tool-Kit: Suggestion Program Manual with Idea-Tracker Software Everything you need to build and manage a suggestion program for your department or organization. EVERYTHING you need to start a wildly successful suggestion and employee involvement program...all in one kit...so you get started fast. EVERYTHING you need to keep your suggestion and employee involvement program going full blast for years to come...and track all the activity and savings from all the ideas. EVERYTHING you need is in the Idea-Tool-Kit to re-charge a dormant or under-performing suggestion program...and keep it going with great success for years to come. The Idea-Tool-Kit Includes: 1. The Complete SUGGESTION PROGRAM Made Easy ...Do-it-yourself Manual. PLUS: 2.IdeaTracker™ Software to help you administer the entire program. Read below..

Part 1- Complete Suggestion Program Made Easy Manual With this Manual you get... Step-by-step guidance in all the actions you must take to launch - or to re-launch - your own wildly successful suggestion program or employee involvement program. Examples of the very best and most successful suggestion and employee involvement programs...so you know you're making the right decisions in designing your own program. Dozens of actions you can adopt to keep your program humming along with enthusiastic employee participation, year-after-year. Dozens of activities you and your employees can get involved in to stimulate the continous generation of new ideas. Contents of The Complete Suggestion Program Made Easy *COMPLETE. All the best, most successful steps and decisions for your own wildly successful suggestion and employee involvement program. Nearly 25 years of research and experience in suggestion and employee involvement programs went into creating these Step-by-Step guidelines. All the research is complete, so you don't have to spend hundreds of hours researching for the information and answers you want. *MADE EASY. Every step you need to take is in this manual, plus guidance and suggestions for every decision you need to make. This manual takes the hard work out of starting - or re-charging - your suggestion and employee involvement program. Included in the Manual are... • The 7 Basic Steps for making your workplace A Great Idea Factory! • Barriers you have to overcome to achieve a successful program. • How to Gain Solid Backing from Management. • The Complete Step-by-Step Actions to take to initiate a new program - or to re-energize an existing program - and to keep it going year-after-year. • Dozens of ways to get employees to create and share new ideas, month-in and month-out. • Step-by-Step guidance for planning and launching a one-month, intensive campaign to involve all your employees in submitting as many ideas as they possibly can. • Sample program Guidelines. • Sample program Idea Forms. • Sample recognition, award, and acceptance Forms. • Sample Posters for promoting your program to employees. • A Question-of-the-Month Activity with 82 sample monthly questions to get employees to share new ideas month-after-month, year-after-year. • More than a dozen examples of highly successful suggestion and employee involvement programs.

Part 2- Idea-Tracker Software The Second Part of the Idea-Tool-Kit package: This Microsoft Windows Access 2000 (or higher) application is a single-user, Administrator version...that keeps track of all the ideas submitted by employees...and all the activity and decisions related to the ideas. Don't waste time trying to manage 100s - even 1,000s - of employee ideas the old-fashioned, "paper-files and ledger-sheets" way. IDEA FORM (see the graphic). Enter all the information and notes relating to each idea into the Idea Form. Search for previously submitted ideas and all the activity and action related to each idea. Save precious time by quickly recording data in your computer and then quickly finding records. REPORTS. Access and print out reports on ideas in 33 different ways! You don't want to guess at what's happening in your suggestion and employee involvement program. You want documentation of activity and of the status and progress of each idea. COST/BENEFIT REPORTS. Also access and print out cost/benefit reports on ideas susbmitted by employees, and on ideas evaluated by evaluators. You want reports that show the successful results of your program. Order the Complete 2-Part Idea-Tool-Kit Package Now for just $289