22nd January 2020
2020: The Year of the Employee Idea: Debra Corey – DebCo HR
This content was taken from our latest eBook: ‘2020: The Year of the Employee Idea: Employee Ideas from our global Engagement 101 Influencers’. To download the eBook in full. simply click here.
Debra Corey
Chief ‘Pay It Forward’ Officer
DebCo HR
Whenever I speak to companies about the power of ideas, the first thing I do is pop up on the screen (or wall) Sidney Yoshida’s “Iceberg of Ignorance” model, something he developed way back in 1989. It shows that only 4% of problems are known to top managers, 7% to middle managers, 74% to supervisors, and 100% to front-line employees. That’s one big iceberg of problems heading towards our companies to destroy them, and if we ever want to ‘melt it’, we need to do so through the power of employee ideas.
A great example of this power comes from when I worked at Merlin Entertainments, a company having a great culture of employees putting forward their ideas. A front-line employee saw a problem, which was lines of parents and impatient children waiting to go on rides, and put forward the idea of putting tables of LEGO pieces in the centre of the lines so that children could safely play while their parents waited in the line. What a brilliant idea, and not one that a member of the leadership team would have ever suggested as they hadn’t lived with this problem every day. This idea completely changed the customer experience, and in fact, every time I go back to this LEGOLAND or any other theme park attraction, I think of this wonderful employee who used his power to melt the problem.
So how do you get this level of contribution from your employees, how do you get them to speak up? Here are three tips from what I’ve learned over the years:
Incorporate the employee voice into at least one of your company values. For example, at my previous company, Reward Gateway, we had a value of ‘speak up’. This showed our employees that speaking up and contributing was not a nice thing to do, but a behaviour that was expected of them.
Create vehicles where employees can easily contribute. For example, at Merlin Entertainments we had a ‘great ideas’ program, where employees could easily go online and contribute their great ideas, and others could get involved with them as well. This showed employees that generating ideas was the responsibility of everyone at the company. Recognize employees for their contributions.
And finally, if you want to encourage your employees to contribute their precious ideas, it’s critical that you recognize them for doing so or else they may not think it’s worth their time and effort. Whether through a formal or informal recognition program, make sure you thank them for their idea and explain to them the impact that it made to you and to the company.
Tickets are available now for our London Employee Engagement Conference on 1st April 2020 – Click here to register now
Tickets are available now for our New York Employee Engagement Conference on 11th June 2020 – Click here to register now
This content was taken from our latest eBook: ‘2020: The Year of the Employee Idea: Employee Ideas from our global Engagement 101 Influencers’. To download the eBook in full. simply click here.