How to get 100s ideas for your company each year

Lloyd Sevack, President, P. Eng. 
Montreal, Quebec

At Tripar, we love to improve. 

And over the last 20 years, we developed a simple method that any company can use and start generating 100s of great ideas from their employees each year. But don’t be fooled by it’s simplicity. It took almost no time to get it right. Now it’s part of our kaizen culture. 

So, if you care about 1%-35% gains and improvements, you’ll like this.

The old Tripar suggestion program 

In 2004, Tripar had a “Suggestion Program” was largely void and sat empty  of any real meaningful suggestions for many months. The running joke of this old suggestion program was: 

“Hey, we got a suggestion this month!” 

What’s the suggestion? 

“F___ the suggestion program” 🙁 

With this kind of feedback, I was determined to fix this. 

A new suggestion program that just works

Having returned to Tripar in 2001 (after a 16-year hiatus after graduating engineering in ‘85), I saw that the old suggestion program was in bad shape. I searched on how other companies did this to find something that was simple and effective. 

Some suggestion programs like to calculate the savings and reward the winner based on who saved the most. The problem is that before you know it, you need an actuary (or more) to constantly calculate those savings. It’s never-ending exercise. I didn’t want to do that.

So I came up with a simpler plan: 

1. A simple form was created to capture the employee’s name and suggestion. 
2. To qualify, you had to state the problem and solution, and the “suggestor” had to tick off one or more boxes identifying the areas of benefit (e.g. reduced handling, increased efficiency, improved safety, etc. – about 9 choices.)
3. In the early days of each month, all suggestions from the previous month were collected and evaluated by a committee of departmental Managers (from all areas), to be sure that a suggestion that might benefit one area, would not have an offsetting detriment in another area, and then collectively decide on which suggestions would be implemented, investigated further, or not implemented.
4. If the suggestor’s solution was flawed or needed further development by the committee into a workable solution that overcame the legitimate problem identified, the suggestion would still qualify. (The logic was that if the suggestor never identified the problem, a solution would never have been considered.)
5. The committee would decide which suggestion was the best of the month with those related to improved safety given priority. 

All suggestions were replied to and posted in our lunchroom. 

How do we reward our people? 

Simple. First, the employee with the best suggestion for the month gets a signed certificate AND 1-day paid vacation! Our employees are happy and so are we.

Second, every year the committee reconvenes to vote on the best suggestion of the year. The winner then gets another signed certificate with a 1-week paid vacation. This got all employees onboard and curious about who will win the week off. We make it a big thing. 

In the first year, of the 126 suggestions 80 some were adopted! And you know what? The ideas haven’t stopped. We’re nearing 20 years of running this program! It works crazy well. 

Every year, we get hundreds of  ideas from our employees like clockwork. So far, we’ve given away 399 paid days off to employees and will continue to do so. 

Creating a culture of continuous improvement 

The certificates were also hung in our lunchroom. At the end of the first year all certificates were taken down. Several people asked why they were being taken down, to which we replied to make room for the new year’s suggestion certificates. The reply was “So.” 

It was then that I realized people were proud to have contributed and won. As we renovating our lunchroom in 2008, I devote a large wall to holding these, almost forever, on purpose designed backboards under spotlights. We now have four 4 x 8 boards to hold all winner’s certificates.

You can do this too 

If this works for a 75-year-old family-run business, this can work for any company. The biggest crime in life is thinking too small or saying “that won’t work for me.” We are successful because of our people. And you’ll be amazed at what people come up with. 

Trust me, the benefits alone; improved safety, fewer accidents & time lost (not to mention insurance costs), improved efficiencies, far outweigh the minimal costs of this program; a committee to properly evaluate suggestions and see to their implementation.   

Hope you find it valuable.