Employees need not fret that they lack the skills to write a polished proposal, he said. All they have to do is fill out a simple form on the company's internal Web site. The employee-suggestion movement has plenty of room for growth. Automakers were the first American companies to promote the programs in a big way, partly because their Japanese rivals were reaping benefits from the practice, business specialists say. Yet today, only about 7 percent of companies have formal suggestion programs, said Andrew Wood, whose company, Ideas Management Ltd. in Gig Harbor, Wash., sets up such programs.
Chief executives have reason to be skeptical.
These programs can backfire if they are not handled intelligently. If managers ask for ideas but fail to act on them, for example, they could sow resentment among workers. And no matter what managers do, some workers will view their efforts as window dressing. But employee empowerment is very much on the minds of most corporate managers these days. Some 89 percent of the chief executives surveyed in 1999 by Robert Half International, a staffing service, said that companies had stepped up efforts to encourage creativity in their employees.