Incentive - March 2008 - (Page 32)

What’s the Big Idea? areas of the business, like safety or product quality. Whatever the program’s aim, recognition and rewards should be offered promptly, or the initiative can backfire. “If people generate ideas and they go into a black hole, people feel burned,” warns Phillips. “You lose a ton of credibility, and it dampens people’s willingness to contribute.” When executed well, an idea suggestion program can generate more than the sum of its suggestions—it can aid in creating a workforce that is more in tune with company objectives and more invested in its fate. “We’ve found that seeing your idea come to life is really a powerful motivator,” says Rosenzweig. their own departments. To develop a new system, Xcel turned to Salt Lake City–based O.C. Tanner. “They really wanted to elevate the caliber of their managers, and additionally, of their employees,” recalls Michelle Smith, vice president of business development for the recognition company. “They also wanted to make the suggestions more strategic.” The result was Xpress Ideas, an online application that is open to any employee. (An initial version of the program was paper-based, and workers still have that option, though 99 percent of suggestions now are submitted electronically.) The program’s strength is how it directs suggestions to specific areas of the business, by offering greater rewards for ideas that deal with those topics. “They really keep the program and the recognition very targeted,” says Smith. “For example, if there’s a cash crunch, they will recognize ideas that generate revenue.” Another improvement of this new system is its responsiveness, to employees as well as to business objectives. Once an employee submits an idea, it is immediately sent to a manager’s attention, and the interface allows the manager to track the idea as it proceeds through the approval process. In marked contrast to the previous suggestion program, today 74 percent of ideas are processed within 30 days. This reinforces trust in the program, says Torres: “The sooner a manager responds to an employee’s suggestion, the employee is more apt to participate again.” Xpress Ideas rewards with points: An employee receives 30 points just for submitting an idea, then additional points if an idea is approved. A sliding scale offers more points for ideas that relate to specific objectives—like safety or billing or improved work space— identified by the company as most crucial. Collected points are then exchangeable for catalog items or for cash, up to $1,000. Under the old system, an employee who suggested an idea that was implemented was awarded 10 percent of the cost savings—potentially a substantial sum. The new system ensures that a greater number of employees are able to share in the rewards, though at a smaller level. Torres thinks the old system emphasized the wrong priorities—employees saw the 10 percent as “a takeaway” rather than as recognition for a job well done. And in many cases, the award would be tacked to a paycheck as a bonus, long after the initial submission; its impact diluted. Over time, Xpress Ideas has been embraced by employees. In 2004, one of the most successful years, approximately 7,600 suggestions were submitted, leading to a savings of $17 million. About 15 percent of the workforce participated, and 74 percent of the ideas were approved or not within 30 days. The program has since survived several corporate reorganizations, and at midyear in 2007, had received 4,600 suggestions. Torres intends to improve and update Xpress Ideas, along with all of Xcel’s recognition programs, in 2008. He plans to survey participants and compare the safety and output records of teams with the most suggestions to those with fewer new ideas. “I think there has been real improvement in engagement,” he says. In fact, Torres believes the new suggestion system has led to an overall culture shift at Xcel, with employees taking more ownership in the business and seeking out ways to improve the way they work. “I have an engineer manager who said, [before,] he had a group of good folks. Now these same employees come to work saying, ‘How can I do the job better?’ They understand how their work spends budget dollars.” At the same time, he says, having the program makes teams more cohesive: “As employees start to participate, managers have the opportunity to see the employee’s point of view. In addition to the other improvements, here’s a communications improvement.” Good Idea: Safety is sure to imprive due to an employee’s suggestion that Xcel replace the heavy, steel wrenches used by many workers with a lightweight aluminum model less likely to cause injuries. Case Study #1 Xcel Energy Bright ideas are part of a day’s work at Xcel Energy, a Fo rtune 500 company based in Minneapolis that provides electricity and natural gas to eight Midwestern and Western states. Safety and efficiency are more than just catchwords in a mission statement at this company with stakes in coal, hydro and nuclear plants as well as oil and gas pipelines. But until recently, Xcel was not plugged in to the expertise of its nearly 10,000 employees. Though the company had a standard suggestion system, the results were disheartening—few people contributed, and those who did rarely received just or timely compensation. “The previous version was too bureaucratic,” admits John Torres, Xcel’s manager of corporate rewards and recognition. “You would have to have a huge amount of documents prepared to submit your idea, and then it would sit for months before it got reviewed. Very few of the ideas were implemented, [in part because] the wrong people were reviewing them.” Instead, managers wanted a program that would simplify participation; they also wanted to be directly involved in judging the viability of ideas for 32 | Incentive | March 2008 | incentivemag.com http://incentivemag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - March 2008

Incentive - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: Delivering on Diversity In The News Cover Story: Leveraging Diversity in the Workplace Incentive Interview: Paul Levesque on Why Awards Fail Case Study: AEIS’ Max!-imum Incentive Program Mine Employees’ Creativity with Innovation Incentives Incentive Must-Reads The Third Annual Gift Card Roundtable My Turn: Motivation or Bribery? Everybody Get Together In Her Shoes: Why Bosses Should Be Flexible Incentive Primer: Passport Problem-Solving potentials Here and Now Is CES Electronics Heaven? China and Crystal: More Than a Pretty Face Travel News Florida: What’s New on the Beach? Smooth Sailing for Incentive Cruising Come To Hawaii And Take It Fast Last Word: But Enough About You

Incentive - March 2008

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