Despite ongoing efficiency concerns, organizations are not tapping into the ideas their employees are ready to offer to solve them, according to an Eagle Hill Consulting report released March 3.
More than three-fourths of employees surveyed said they regularly speak with their colleagues about how to work more efficiently, and 66% said they’ve shared those ideas with their organizations. But more than half of workers said their organization didn’t incentivize them to do so, and 41% said their organization “rarely or never” seeks their ideas for improvements.
“A first step in improving efficiency is to engage employees on ways to improve efficiency as they are steeped in the day-to-day work and often are frustrated by inefficiency,” Melissa Jezior, president and CEO of Eagle Hill Consulting, said in a statement.
But many employers lack a way to enable this, the survey showed. For example, 63% of employees said their company lacks a clear process to submit ideas for improvements, with nearly one-fourth saying their company doesn’t have a process at all. Additionally, 42% of workers said they don’t feel empowered to make changes — and the “vast majority” of workers said their organization struggles to generate ideas for change at all, Eagle Hill said.
One of an employer’s biggest tools in approaching this challenge is simple, Eagle Hill said: Follow through. Simply acting upon worker ideas can improve engagement and drive “substantial productivity gains,” according to the report.
“Show your commitment to top ideas by being transparent with employees about the evaluation and implementation process,” the report said. “Transparency and clear evaluation criteria enable employees to see why some ideas are implemented and others are not.”
Generally, employers should be wary of asking for feedback and then doing nothing with it, other reports have said. Doing so may erode trust and make employees feel even less heard, McLean & Co. said in a report released June 2024.