Secrets of successful staff suggestion schemes
How retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Primark are unlocking business potential by tapping into great ideas from staff
Initiatives such as M&S' Straight to Stuart suggestion scheme can help unlock smart business ideas from retail’s frontline. George MacDonald looks at how they can be used most effectively.
One of the most successful retailers ever said: “The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.”
That was Walmart founder Sam Walton, and that attitude helped him build what became the world’s biggest retailer.
Back in the early days, he gathered the frontline intel from what might be described as management by walking around, such as dropping in late at night to dish out doughnuts and chat with employees in his distribution centre.
Decades on, listening to the shopfloor and picking up on the good ideas that originate from it are on the agenda of many retailers. Some have deployed suggestion schemes – often now facilitated by technology – specifically to hear those voices.
One of the most prominent is Marks & Spencer chief executive Stuart Machin’s Straight to Stuart channel – an overhauled and updated iteration of the Tell Steve programme launched by his predecessor Steve Rowe. Which, in turn, drew on another scheme famously deployed by Archie Norman – now chair of M&S, during his turnaround of Asda.
So far, Straight to Stuart has drawn more than 25,000 ideas covering everything from store improvements to customer and colleague experience, such as changes to shopping trolley design or staff benefits, as well as specific issues raised for feedback by the retailer including cost savings.
Running like a thread through some of the best-known and most successful schemes is the influence of Julian Richer, the retail entrepreneur who founded Richer Sounds and advised both Asda and M&S – along with many other businesses – on their suggestion programmes.
Richer remains a believer in the value of suggestion schemes. Fundamentally, he says: “Us bosses, we do our best, but the people at the coalface have a much better idea of what's going on.”
He set out eight principles for such initiatives and believes they are as relevant now as they ever were.
Julian Richer, founder, Richer Sounds
Julian Richer, founder, Richer Sounds
Retail entrepreneur Julian Richer’s principles for successful suggestions
1. The organisation’s most senior person should head the scheme and be the face of it; employees want to please bosses and are more likely to do what they ask
2. Suggestions should be easy to submit
3. Answer every suggestion. If someone has been brave enough to submit one, and caring enough to try and help you, then they at least deserve acknowledgment
4. Turn them around quickly. How motivating do you think it is if it takes 18 months to get back to someone?
5. All suggestions should get a financial reward
6. Encourage your people to go off-site for brainstorming
7. Measure and publish results by shop, department etc, to keep everyone on their toes
8. Use the ideas. Once your people see that they can actually make a contribution to the organisation’s development and get rewarded for it, they will come up with more suggestions — and then you have the most virtuous circle possible
From The Richer Way by Julian Richer, Penguin Books
Suggestion boxes for the digital age
M&S works with specialist ideas and employment experience management platform Sideways 6 to operate its programme, which is made accessible to staff through Teams.
Sideways 6 founder and chief executive Will Read says three key rules of successful schemes are observed – ease of use and engagement, the fact it is clearly backed at the top of the business, which helps bring focus on what matters to the organisation, and a path for bringing ideas to life.
When Richer originally launched his scheme in pre-digital days, he recalls he used to sometimes receive ideas “on napkins, although I don’t think i ever had one on toilet paper”, but the deployment of new technology means mountains of paper can be avoided and the process of ideas submission and enactment made much easier.
Read says that schemes such as Straight to Stuart are “a suggestion box built for today, so it's digital, it's intelligent, it's engaging.”
For instance, at one end of the process, an “AI coach” can help employees hone their ideas through feedback before submission and, at the other end, the technology enables grouping of submissions thematically for ease.
Will Read, founder and chief executive, Sideways 6
Will Read, founder and chief executive, Sideways 6
Getty Images/iStock/Vectorian
Getty Images/iStock/Vectorian
How Primark generates good ideas
Value fashion giant Primark originally launched its suggestions initiative, FWD Think, in 2019.
The scheme, which like M&S’ Straight to Stuart is run in partnership with Sideways 6, was paused during the pandemic and relaunched in 2021.
As well as drawing on colleague expertise, there is dedicated iteration for placement students working for the business. To date, the retailer has received approximately 3,500 ideas.
Primark structures its scheme around themes linked to its global strategy but also tailors it to the specifics of local markets – the retailer operates in 17 countries where tastes and market characteristics may vary, and campaigns typically run every two months or so.
Primark director of innovation Jermaine Lapwood says: “When we sit around a table here in Arthur Ryan House in Dublin, we're having a lot of conversations about new opportunities. Rather than us come up with the ideas or how to move some of those forward, we reach out to our retail colleagues.”
Lapwood says that a targeted, thematic approach – rather than being permanently open to suggestions on any subject helps bring success.
He explains: "We don't want to be in a situation where people are submitting ideas and we can't keep up with the volume, or the ideas don't strategically link to our priorities as a business. That's why we decided to say this is what our focuses are now as a business –how do we engage our 80,000 colleagues to support us?"
“What's probably most important is communication back to the people that share their ideas. We promise we’re going to review every idea – we're going to get back to anybody that submitted an idea within two weeks, and we're going to let them know where their idea is at.”
Ideas adopted by Primark include a ‘baby table’ in the Netherlands, which came from ideas put forward by several people identifying an opportunity in the maternity category and the fact that, playing to Primark’s bricks-and-mortar strengths, customers wanted to see and feel such product rather than buy it online.
Placement students put forward ideas through FWD Think. For example, ideas have included airport pop-up stores to take out some of the hassle of holiday preparations, and introducing Primark to potential new markets through vending machines in prominent locations – both ideas which may or may not be progressed.
Primark colleagues are rewarded for ideas through recognition, such as pin badges and celebrations and cakes in-store rather than with money and, crucially, through continued involvement – a decision made after staff feedback.
Lapwood says that when discussing how to recognise ideas, the message that came back from colleagues was “rather than just give you the idea, would it be possible that we can work with the buying teams, or whatever the relevant teams are, to develop it with them?”
His advice to other retailers considering setting up a suggestion scheme is: “Start relatively small. If we had gone initially to 80,000 people, we would not have been able to commit to replying to everybody.”
He is in no doubt that suggestion schemes bring value: “The reason this is such a powerful tool is it gives you access to people that are speaking to customers all the time. The other challenge that every retailer faces is being on the cusp of cultural relevance and understanding generational mindset changes.
“The early careers group is a way that we stay young, understand how younger people are thinking, and look at some of the challenges we've got. With the many years’ experience that we may have as a leadership team, having fresh eyes from a younger perspective adds so much value.”
Jermaine Lapwood, director of innovation, Primark
Jermaine Lapwood, director of innovation, Primark
Avoiding pitfalls and keys to success
The clear acknowledgement and enactment of ideas is the point of such schemes, helping both to create a general sense of buy-in to the company’s strategy and employee pride in contributing.
That’s why the involvement of the chief executive and those acting on their behalf is so important. Justin King, who started a suggestion scheme when he was turning around Sainsbury’s, recently told the Business Leader podcast: “You have to not just get the information, but visibly act on it. People must believe that they’ve been heard.”
One industry leader with much experience of suggestion programmes observes: “Most [suggestion schemes] are a complete waste of time and fall into disrepair.
“Half of them are run by HR departments and no one wants to write to HR. Some chief executives only pay lip service to that, and the suggestion scheme becomes about them, not about their colleagues. The point is to underpin a culture of involvement where anyone can put up their hand and have a say.”
Sideways 6’s Read agrees that successful schemes need an experienced ‘operator’ to deliver on the ideas and says: “You want someone ideally looking after the scheme who has a great black book, a great internal network and knowledge of how the business works.”
Often such schemes will particularly engage staff at launch, but if the scheme is properly maintained it can continue to deliver according to Read. He says: “It's important that you shout about those ideas that are brought to life and show that change has happened.
“If you do those two things, in almost all cases, it starts to build on a much steadier line that goes above the initial bump, but that only happens if you actually follow through and it's not an ideas graveyard.”
How to reward good ideas
Many retailers adopt a ‘little and often’ stance, and avoid rewards linked to cost savings or sales ultimately generated.
The former approach is good for engagement and results in many beneficiaries, while the latter can occasionally lead to disputes about how much someone should be entitled to.
Rewards for staff suggestions are tax exempt. Two kinds of award are recognised by the tax authorities – “encouragement awards for good suggestions, or to reward employees for special effort” – and “financial benefit awards”, subject to certain conditions.
1. The suggestion scheme must be open to all employees – or to an entire group such as everyone in a particular office;
2. The suggestion must be about the business;
3. It must be “likely” that the employee “would not have made the suggestion as part of their normal work”;
4. The suggestion cannot be made at a meeting specifically for proposing new ideas.
Measuring effectiveness
Read says that evidence of a scheme’s success can be measured by, for instance, an overall improved employee engagement score, particularly on questions such as ‘I feel like ideas are valued at this organisation’ or ‘I feel listened to’.
An obvious measure is the benefit of the ideas themselves, which may include pounds saved or made as a result.
Read points, for instance, to a scheme by housebuilder Balfour Beattie which achieved millions in savings, or Nestle’s InGenius programme, which he says, “is consistently pumping out new products that end up on shelves.”
Although big money might follow in the wake of some inspired colleague suggestions, many of the benefits and changes will be small and incremental – although still worthwhile.
But in an industry such as retail employing large numbers of people, one of the biggest benefits of suggestion programmes is that everyone is united, heading in the same direction.
As Richer concludes: “What better advantage can you have than lots of brilliant ideas from the coalface of your business?”
