In our last blog entry, Ennvea’s CEO Luděk put together his thoughts on the kaizen methodology (you can read it here in case you missed it). In this post, Martin Kostka, our Customer Experience Manager, is picking up on the topic of employee engagement.
HOW IT STARTED
I am no big writer. I struggled in elementary and secondary school with my essays and never got an A. But I thought I would share my take on employee engagement. Having experience from various projects in different industries and client sizes, some things were very similar.
Companies wanted to use the ideas of their people who were part of certain situations, environments or processes as they often knew best what worked, what didn’t and how to make things better. But the employees hardly ever did. They were disengaged, discouraged or didn’t believe their ideas mattered. At best, they shared among themselves, either in the cafeteria at lunch or perhaps even angrily in a pub after the shift, but never with the people who could help them turn the ideas into reality.
And although companies had different programs and initiatives to support and reward these ideas, the results were poor.
I was excited to learn that all of Ennvea saw things in the same way and wanted to do something about it. I said I believed that whatever we do, it must be awesome for both the people who submit the ideas and who work with them.
So one day, the team sat together and compiled a list of points we saw as crucial when it came to employee idea management – and the best tool to digitize it.
7 THINGS THAT MAKE IDEA MANAGEMENT IDEAL (PUN INTENDED)
1. ACCESSIBLE ANYWHERE, ANYTIME
It must be super easy to share the ideas from anywhere, anytime, any device – majority of companies, including the big ones, had some sort of paper Kaizen system in place. No more of that – we need a fast, immediate and modern way of sharing the idea. Why not use the mobile phones that pretty much everyone has? Or any other electronic device that can access the web?
2. IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK
The idea must be provided feedback immediately – you wouldn’t believe how many times I heard stories of “I put my idea in the box and never heard back.“ Submit the idea, be assured it is being looked at and get updates as to what is going on.
3. NO MORE PAPER
Everybody wants digital today. But digital does not mean, at least to me, that you submit your idea in a paper form, somebody else needs to do the data entry (in Excel, right?) or scan the submission form to PDF. No, if digital, then all the way.
4. COOL UX
It must be awesome. Cool, intuitive, nice. Whatever you want to call it. Both for the submitters & people who then work with the submitted ideas. It is 2021. Nobody wants yet another „ERP“ that is barely anything more than a spreadsheet wrapped in an app. Again, how many times have I heard that „we have a system for this or that but I don’t use it as it is ugly and obtrusive“.
5. ALL STEPS COVERED
The system needs to be able to encompass the entire process – idea collection, evaluation, implementation and reward. It does not need to be the most comprehensive solution for each phase but must work as a whole.
6. NO MORE DOUBLE WORK
Just like there must be no obstacles for idea submission, the same must be true for the people who work with the ideas. Work and communicate in one place. If there is anything worth exporting from the system, it should be there. Nobody is interested in CTRL+C & CTRL+V whenever they want to present the results.
7. RECOGNITION
If the system is to be any good, it must be able to promote the ideas and people who submitted them. People who made the ideas into reality. Motivate others to share their ideas. Support and strengthen the spirit of sharing in the organization.
HOW IT STARTED… AGAIN
That discussion took place at the beginning of 2020. We took the idea of the Kaizen platform and turned it into reality. Following the principles outlined above, countless hours of development by our amazing dev team and dozens of meetings later, it is my privilege to introduce to you the eKaizen.app.
A platform for ideas for the people of your organizations, a place for working with them and turning them into something real… making your products and companies better.
I was told a blog should be short to be good. So to have any shot of achieving that, I will conclude my thoughts right here.
Why don’t you head to www.ekaizen.app to learn more about eKaizen, our idea management platform? Or even better, how about booking a short session with me? I’d love to share even more!
