No one wants to be the first person to hassle the boss for a change, even anonymously. Fortunately, there are easy and fun ideas to get your new suggestion box warmed up. Using the ideas we’ve collected here will encourage your staff members to express ideas that may otherwise feel too insignificant to bother about.
Let your employees know what you expect from them. By doing this, you’ll be guiding them to provide you with suggestions that will be useful to you.
Communicate guidelines for giving suggestions. Ask them for constructive, actionable suggestions. Specify any other information or format you’d like them to provide or use respectively.
Also, let employees know why you’re using a suggestion box—whether it’s to foster innovation or you want information that will help you create appropriate welfare packages for them, etc.
You don’t always have to use your suggestion box for serious issues. Introduce some fun once in a while. Asking fun questions will let your employees know that no suggestion or submission is too trivial.
It will also make your employees more comfortable expressing their opinions and ideas. What’s more, you get the chance to learn a few interesting things about your employees.
Examples of fun questions to ask are:
Your suggestion box doesn’t always have to be about general subjects. Ask for suggestions on specific issues going on at the workplace. This is especially important if there’s a pressing issue with far-reaching effects.
Your employees can offer more ideas than you can possibly think of. So, why not take some pressure off the management by welcoming inputs from your employees.
To ensure that your employees are fully engaged, you could throw in an incentive for winning suggestions. This will encourage them to give their best recommendations to tackle the issue at hand.
Everyone has biases they aren’t aware of. These can make it difficult for your employees to give candid feedback. So, it’s smart to get ahead of these before your suggestion box is affected.
One common bias you may experience with employee suggestions is giving feedback based on current occurrences instead of evaluating the situation over time. This can make you think things are going well when they aren’t. So, you want to specify that their feedback should cover a specific period, e.g., the past three weeks, 1 month, etc.
Allow for anonymous contributions to your suggestion box. However, don’t stop there. Ensure that you have measures in place to protect the identities of anonymous respondents.
Guaranteeing anonymity will encourage honest suggestions that your employees wouldn’t otherwise share if their identities were public.
Don’t just start a suggestion box and forget all about it. Ensure you review the submissions periodically. This will show employees that their suggestions are valued and that you aren’t just going through the motions.
Reviewing submissions doesn’t have to interfere with your responsibilities. Simply dedicate a day to doing it. If possible, you can also assign a team of employees to review suggestions.
One of the best ways to encourage your employees to leave feedback is by implementing their ideas. Choose a winning idea periodically, say monthly, and implement it. Don’t forget to give the respondent credit for it.
By implementing their ideas, your employees will know that their opinions matter, and this will increase their sense of purpose in your organization.
It’s important to ensure your employees aren’t having any difficulties giving you feedback. Ask them questions to know their ease of using the tool, what they would like you to do better about the entire feedback process, etc.
You don’t have to create a separate survey for this purpose. Simply add another section to your original survey to cater to this.
It’s advisable to have an onboarding session for them where you walk them through how to use the tool if that’s what they’re having trouble with.
Using the right tool goes a long way to inspiring your employees to give feedback. In some cases, some employees won’t give feedback unless they are sure they can do so anonymously.
Suggestion Ox is a digital platform that allows you to collect feedback from your employees anonymously. With this tool, you can guarantee more honest responses from your employees because it is easy to use and helps build trust in your organization.
Sign up today to start collecting feedback from your employees!
Suggestion Ox has turbocharged the suggestion box. Over 60,000 companies, associations and government agencies use their anonymous online suggestion box to gather actionable employee feedback, gain customer insights or empower whistleblowing and reporting.
