Designing an Innovation Portal: What Features Should I Include for Employee Ideas?

Hi Guys,

Recently, I have been entrusted with the job of designing an innovation portal for my company. It would act as a platform where employees can post their innovative ideas related to the job or workplace. The innovative ideas would be accessible only to the employees. The good ideas would be screened by the management and implemented at the right time.

I am sure that many of you would already have such a portal existing in your company. Can you please share with me the features of such a portal? Even if you don't have such a portal, you can definitely suggest the features that you believe would be ideal for such a platform.

Looking forward to your suggestions.

Regards,
Santosh Verma
Bangalore
9886609605

Hi Santhosh,

Congratulations on such a wonderful initiative.

It is better to finalize the innovation plan with all sorts of associated policies, like who can review the innovative ideas posted by employees, what would be the mechanism to announce selected ideas, and how to appreciate employees for the idea before launching the project.

Also, you can expect a huge amount of administrative work in connection with this.

Here are some of my thoughts. If found useful, you can try:

1. You can request employees to put their innovative ideas for selected categories, for example, Production Automation, testing automation, employee motivation, cost reduction, etc. In a better way, you can announce this on your intranet home.

2. Decide approvers for innovative ideas and an innovation coordinator/admin.

3. Let the employee describe the idea, design charts/diagrams/prototypes, and submit to the approver with a copy to the innovation admin.

4. Let the approver approve/reject the idea.

5. When the idea is approved, release the information somewhere on the intranet.

6. You may give appreciation/monetary benefits to the employee.

If you have an HR information system in place, you can reduce 90% of administrative efforts and ensure more transparency in the process.

Hope this project will definitely motivate your team. Best of luck.

Good suggestions by Sreekumar:)

You will have to make a detailed policy and plan for the innovation portal, which should cover the following aspects:

1. CATEGORIZATION OF INNOVATIVE IDEAS - It could be department-wise or type of innovative idea-wise, like creating a new process, suggesting improvements in the existing process, etc.
2. PROCESS TO SUBMIT THE IDEA - A structured format for the employee to submit the idea; for example, what is the idea, why is it needed, what are its benefits, etc.
3. APPROVAL TEAM: Who would be part of the approval team and what would be the basis of approval.
4. TRACKING OF THE IDEA SUBMITTED AND TIMELINES - Employees should be able to track the idea submitted, and there should be defined timelines to know whether their idea is submitted or not.
5. REWARDING THE SELECTED AND IMPLEMENTED IDEAS.

Hope it will help you to some extent.

Regards,
Richa

Hi Sreekumar, Richa, and Govil,

Thank you for your suggestions. I am sure they would be useful to me in the process. Guys, I have one more request. Can you please let me know some of the unique and innovative features you think would add more value to the portal?

Please come up with your suggestions.

Regards, Santosh Verma.

Hi, Guys,

Does any of you have such a portal already existing in your company? Can you please let me know the features of an innovation portal?

Hi,

We do have the same arrangement in my current company. We call this concept the "Idea of the Month." We create one page every day on our intranet, which is accessible to all employees, and we ask them to share their ideas online on the page. Upon completion of the month, we download all the ideas that were captured on the site. We form a panel comprising people from senior managerial positions and above and present all the collected ideas to them for review. Based on mutual consent by the panel, the best idea is selected and not only shared with management for implementation but also awarded by HR.

Thanks.
Best Wishes,
Rajiv Naithani