'Ideas Register' Template
As the rate of change increases exponentially, the ability to stay competitive through innovation and disruption is key for any organization. While organizations recognize this, their focus on productivity, cost, revenue, and profitability rarely enables employees the opportunity to put ideas forward and attempt to alter the current state of play.
This template is all about providing employees with an avenue to express their ideas and what they need to bring them to life. By giving them an opportunity to express their ideas, which may not be obvious to leadership, it opens up other channels of potential innovation.
Customizing Your Survey
Our template has been designed to be short, simple, and to the point. We don’t want people to see the process of submitting an idea to be lengthy. Rather, they can do this in a matter of minutes be whilst having a coffee, traveling to work, or even when they wake up in the middle of the night and want to capture their idea. This is an open ended survey (so it should always be live) for anyone to contribute to it at any time! During the survey set up you will be asked to provide an expiry date. To keep this open ended, you can set an end date like 5 or 10 years from the survey’s beginning, meaning you can be sure that survey will be accessible when people want to complete it. You can also set reminders for this survey, so your employees can find the available link each month.
Food for thought
- You need to be committed to regularly reviewing this information. Our suggestion is that it sits in business innovation or a part of the business that has people who are accountable for the data being actioned. It’s not only about asking people to share their ideas – it’s about following up, and providing them with the encouragement to do something further with it.
- Traditional talent development has involved identifying talent through formal ‘reviews’ and processes. Utilizing an organization wide survey to capture ideas is a fantastic way of allowing an entrepreneurial culture to develop.
- Don’t forget to share with the wider organization the number of ideas that get submitted each month or quarter and, of those, which projects are emerging. This communication will reinforce the benefits for employees of sharing their ideas and further encourage others to take part.
Results
- While there’s no perfect answer to this, the absolute must is to share the ideas which are being generated by employees and communicate the investment which is being made in each idea put forward. Some ways of reinforcing the benefits for employees are:
- Link the ideas register to reward and recognition initiatives (if you do not currently have these capabilities on your platform get in touch with your Customer Success Manager who can discuss with you how this can work).
- Reflect and share the progress on ideas which have taken off and lead to exciting developments. Use blogs to help spread the word (if you are unsure of what this is, ask your Customer Success Manager).
- Regardless of the scale of the idea, celebrate the contribution.
- Bring teams together to brainstorm ideas then ‘register’ the idea on the spot. This enables teams to put some structure around their creative time which serves a dual purpose of bonding teams together.
- Have the ideas register as a constant tile on your platform to enable an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit.