A tool to measure maturity of an employee suggestion scheme

Abstract

Employee Suggestion Schemes have been used in organizations for a long time due to the fact that they enable fostering of creative ability of employees. However, they must be used effectively and in a sustainable manner to better the creativity and innovation capacity of organizations in order to improve competitive advantage. Therefore there is a need to understand the maturity of Employee Suggestion Schemes. This paper proposes a new, structured evaluation tool for assessing an organizational Employee Suggestion Scheme maturity. It suggests five building blocks: Leadership and Work Environment, System Capability, System Effectiveness, Organizational Encouragement and System Barriers, each of them characterized by several relevant indicators and an assessment/grading scale in order for an organization to be able to determine the maturity level of their Employee Suggestion Scheme as: Initial stage, Development stage or Advanced stage. Organizations should apply this tool to assess the maturity level of their Employee Suggestion Scheme and draw a roadmap for its improvements.