Employee Ideas
Robertson Hunter Stewart
Management Consultant | Coach | Author | Leadership expert
Just think about the last time that you had a great idea about how to make your company more successful and were completely ignored by your direct superior or even higher up in the "food chain". It might very well have been an idea that could have made the company loads of money or profits.
In addition to all of this, and to add insult to injury, no one has bothered to take the time to you why this was a bad idea or why it is not possible to put in place!
The results of this are likely to be as follows:
- You are probably feeling very frustrated by this.
- You might go from being a very happy to a very unhappy employee.
- You certainly won't be sharing any more bright ideas.
- You might even decide to leave the company where you are currently working and share this bright idea with your future employer.
In situations like this, if management continues to ignore ideas generated by their employees they risk to find themselves losing ideas (innovation), key people (talents) and a general loss in employee motivation and engagement. Not only that, but this is also likely to lead to higher turnover than is necessary for the organization and therefore incur unnecessary recruitment and training costs.
IN SUMMARY:
YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO IDEAS GENERATED BY YOUR EMPLOYEES!
This does not mean that you always need to take on board ideas coming from your employees as they might not always be good ideas, or, in some cases they might be impossible to put in place. But you should still to take time to listen to these ideas and ensure that you give feedback.
You never know: Maybe one day, one of these ideas will fundamentally change the way that the organization is doing business. A real game changer!
This article is taken from and inspired by my book Employee Power:
The Incredible Value of Employee Power Unleashed (How to gain competitive advantage by treating your employees well!! (Finalist N.N.Light Book Awards Business Section 2019)
You can see the link to the book here:
Senior QA Expert | Test Automation & Compliance Expert | CMST-CSTE | Agile & DevOps | Speaker & Lecturer | Driving Software Excellence Across Global Markets
3 年Wow awesome. Indeed. I really love this article. Many thanks for sharing this.
Writer | Storyteller | Mentor | Creative Writer | Inspires, Simplifies, Educates & Motivates | IT QualityConsultant - CSV in Pharma | Canva Designer
4 年Interesting!!
Principal Sales Operation Specialist (Q2O) at Arctera.io
4 年Very true, ideas generate everyday in employees mind. These ideas can be put into action by building comfortable, creative, interesting environment by management. Sometime because of lack of supportive culture idea get killed before it born. Like you mentioned Robertson Hunter Stewart one simple idea can be game changer
Consultant in Justice for Children
4 年I like the saying 'Devil is in details' you mentioned dear Robertson. Fully agree with you on importance of listening to employees' opinions as they see more details. In every organisation there should be procedures and environment to empower the staff freely discuss work affecting issues and suggest their vision for solutions. Rule no.1 should be "all ideas are worth to consider",? no.2 - the bizarre ideas should be given keen attention, no.3 - follow up action should be provided to encourage the staff to continue coming up with more ideas.. True leaders 'walk and talk and talk the walk' finding time for regular formal and informal meetings with employees.
Chief Executive Officer at Sejal Techno Services
4 年Very true. I am experiencing it right now.