We applaud any effort to collect employee ideas for improvement. These days with remote work becoming more popular (and often necessary due to COIVD-19), it makes sense that leaders are looking for online tools to accept worker suggestions for change. There are even free options that allow employees to offer ideas anonymously. Why not go for it?

While electronic suggestion boxes may be tempting at first glance, there are several reasons that they are not the best way to harness the creativity and potential for innovation from your team. 

Here are the biggest problems with online suggestion boxes:

The need for anonymity reveals a cultural problem.

Why would employees not be proud to share their ideas for improvement or areas of concern? Is there a feeling that the squeaky wheel gets punished? Are workers reluctant to challenge the status quo? Are employee concerns out of alignment with the strategic vision?

Instead of providing tools for employees to provide input incognito, today’s successful organizations build a culture that encourages feedback and action. Every employee is not only willing to contribute ideas, but they are expected to engage in quality and process improvement regularly. When the culture is strong, innovation flourishes out in the open, not under cover of a concealed IP address.

Collecting suggestions is only the beginning. 

Asking for employee ideas and not doing anything about them can make matters worse. Yes, people like to vent, but inaction shows a lack of respect that will cause employees to disengage altogether. Who wants to stick their best idea in a box?

The alternative is to implement software designed to collect opportunities for improvement and structure positive change. That’s what people really want. The best solutions offer:

Opportunity capture from any device. When employees notice something that could be more efficient or reduce waste, it should be easy for them to document it on their desktop or mobile device.

Dynamic workflow. When an idea is collected, it should be routed to the right supervisor or manager for review. Once a project gets rolling, alerts and notifications keep everyone on track and on time.

Impact reporting. Employees want to see how their ideas are having an impact on the organization. Improvement software with the ability to track the long and short-term results of change turns the vague concept into something that people can understand. It also creates benchmarks for monitoring performance trends.

Employee engagement requires mindfulness.  

Managing the health of improvement culture is an essential responsibility for leaders. An anonymous online suggestion system does not help you get insight into the people, teams, and functions that are working on process and quality improvements. How do you know if multiple people are making suggestions or if it is just a few employees? 

On the other hand, improvement software allows leaders to create dashboards that show the engagement and activities of every person, team, or function. You can see how improvement efforts are spreading across the organization and take action if it isn’t flourishing. What’s more, employee performance evaluation can be tied to their level of effort and engagement with improvement work.

Collective wisdom should be shared! 

Online suggestion boxes don’t do anything to make the organization smarter. Sure, you might learn more about what people don’t like, but these systems don’t offer any insight into what solutions have been tried in the past, nor do they do anything to help bring new employees up to speed.

Technology designed for improvement work addresses the need to collect, develop, and share tribal wisdom. Each time a project occurs, the best practices and problems to avoid are available for review by anyone who needs them. Ideally, search capabilities make it easy to find similar improvements to leverage what works. 

An online suggestion box is a weak half measure when compared to the capabilities of modern improvement platforms. When it comes to engaging employees in creating the conditions for them to do their best work, thereby providing more value to your customers, it’s time to go big or go home.