North East Lincolnshire Council Employees' Ideas Win Votes

LIVERPOOL, England, March 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Austerity measures are impacting all council budgets, forcing many councils to reduce services or make redundancies. N.E Lincs Council decided the best money saving ideas would be identified by listening to its employees. The council deployed EmployeeVoice from OrganisedFeedback (http://organisedfeedback.com/), allowing employees to suggest and vote on ideas. Sue Wilson the Employee Voice Project Manager at N.E. Lincs Council said that "Within days of launch, we had a good number of suggestions and comments. As we roll it out across the whole council the potential is huge."

While many organisations rely on e-mail or team meetings to get ideas from key stakeholders, the need at N.E. Lincs was for a more co-ordinated approach which allowed our people to discuss each other's suggestions and give their support to their preferred ones. That way management can make much more informed decisions about whether to implement ideas. In addition, a Council can also easily and automatically share best ideas with any other Council or its Partners, e.g. Police and Health Services, UK wide. In effect sharing the best ideas to save money and complement the requirement to share resources.

Sue Wilson went on to say "As well as a system for capturing ideas, it was just as important for us to be able to feed back to employees what will happen with these ideas. EmployeeVoice gives us the ability to close the loop. We can change the status of the suggestions so staff can see, at a glance, whether they are to be implemented and if not, we can explain to them why not. This gives people a chance to understand the decision making process and challenge decisions they don't agree with."

The success of EmployeeVoice within N.E. Lincs Council has led to nationwide initiative, with Councils from Shetland to Devon taking the system. The interest in EmployeeVoice has been outstanding and shows that councils and businesses alike value their employees and are keen to listen to their ideas says Jim Sproat CEO of OrganisedFeedback ( http://organisedfeedback.com/). Variants on the EmployeeVoice theme are available for when ideas and feedback is required from customers or the public.

The full case study from N.E. Lincs council can be found at http://www.organisedfeedback.com/casestudy.pdf

Related Links:

http://www.organisedfeedback.com

John Robinson USP Ventures +44(0)7773-818183