Business improvement ideas: how to collect them, evaluate them and respond to the people who suggest them

Neither answer says what happens to the idea after it has been voiced.

An improvement proposal is an idea from the person who performs a task to change a detail of it — a sequence, where a material is placed — written down to be evaluated and to receive a response [1].

In the ISTAT 2023 Census (2022 data), only 13.9% of small Italian companies say they offer greater involvement in company decisions to attract or retain staff [2].

The professional with two team members, the owner of a family business who moves between the office and the shop floor, the leadership of a hundred-person company all have the same idle capital: the ideas of the people who do the work.

There is no shortage of proposals from the people who do the work: what's missing is the part that comes after. A proposal exists only when someone has written it down, someone has evaluated it with stated criteria, and the person who made it has received a response by a date, even when the answer is no.

This article describes where to collect proposals, what grid to evaluate them with and how to respond to the people who made them, with ten examples that can be implemented within a month.

What happens today to ideas voiced out loud, and when they become an improvement proposal

Between an idea mentioned during a break and the same idea written in three lines on a form, which is more likely to be evaluated within a month?

The first almost never, and not out of ill will: in eight out of ten Italian companies, one person or one family makes the decisions [2], and an idea voiced out loud ends up on that person's mental list, where it competes with everything else.

Today, in a company, an idea from the people doing the work usually meets one of three fates: it's mentioned during a break and forgotten, it's received with an "I'll take care of it" and slides to the bottom of the business owner's list, or it's postponed "to the next meeting," which talks about something else.

None of the three is a proposal: they are three ways an idea evaporates before it's evaluated.

This section defines what an improvement proposal is, what it should be distinguished from, and where it sits between finding a problem and improving a system.

For the Treccani dictionary, a proposal is "the act of proposing" and, in the legal sense, a complete offer that awaits only acceptance [1]: by definition it waits for a response, whereas a suggestion ("advising what to do or not to do" [3]) doesn't commit the person who gives it, and the suggestion box carries that limit in its name.

A complaint ("the shelving is awkward") doesn't say what to do differently; a nonconformity report records a deviation from a standard and has its own workflow; a request ("a new drill") asks for a resource, not a way of working; a new product is business innovation.

In Italy, management lies with the business owner or a family member, with a manager in only 1.4% of companies controlled by an individual or a family (2022 data) [2]: the evaluation available today is the business owner's memory, and memory has no deadlines.

The proposal arrives when the problem is already visible (guide to business problem solving) and lives within the cycle of continuous improvement in the workplace (Kaizen entry in the glossary).

An idea becomes an improvement proposal when it's written down with a name on it and knows by when it will get a response: from that point it doesn't evaporate, it gets evaluated.

Why the workplace suggestion box stays empty and what replaces it

With or without a suggestion box hanging in the department, does the number of proposals that come in really change?

In a 2,000-employee plant, the centralized suggestion box remained in use until 1992; the system that replaced it, decentralized and with the outcome visible to the person proposing, raised proposals from 250 to more than 1,000 a year [4].

The suggestion box doesn't fail because there's a lack of ideas: it fails because it separates the idea from the person and doesn't say when a response will come.

Whoever drops in a sheet doesn't know who will read it, by what criteria, or by when; the second time, they don't drop one in.

This section explains the three flaws of the suggestion box and describes the minimum tool that fixes them: a three-field board, hung where the work happens.

A box collects ideas; a mechanism makes them exist: someone writes them down, someone evaluates them with stated criteria, someone responds by a date. What the box lacks is exactly the part that comes after.

The board collects responses; problems that don't yet have a response belong elsewhere, on the problem log, which has its own fields and review cycle.

There are three flaws:

• Distance — whoever evaluates can't ask questions of the person who knows the problem.
• No date — a wait without a deadline is an unspoken no.
• Invisible evaluation — neither the criteria nor the outcome reach the person who proposed.

Van Dijk and van den Ende (2002) distinguish extraction, landing and follow-up of an idea, and the landing is decided by the manager's reaction: working on the idea is already a visible acceptance, which encourages people to propose again [4].

The plant is a large company; in a fifteen-person family business, the decentralized system is a board in the department and the tracking is an "outcome" column written in pen.

The minimum tool is the Improvement Proposal Board — paper in the department, a shared folder or a form — with three fields, what I observed, which process is involved, what I would do differently, plus a signature: the proposal has an owner who can be called to the table when it's evaluated.

The format matters less than the visibility of the outcome.

With the board, the number of proposals changes on one condition: that every sheet is followed by an evaluation and a response with its date.

The three things that must stay visible to involve employees in improvement

A speech by the business owner on the importance of everyone's ideas, or a single proposal evaluated in front of everyone by the date written on the board: which of the two brings in the second proposal?

In a 2007 study of employees and managers at a restaurant chain, the concrete follow-up the manager gave to ideas was more strongly linked to employees' willingness to speak up than the manager's leadership style was, and the effect was strongest precisely among the best employees [5].

Involvement isn't obtained by asking for it: it's obtained by showing what happens to a proposal after it's been written.

Three things must stay visible to the people doing the work: the proposal, the criteria by which it's evaluated, and the response with its date.

This section describes how to keep them visible in a company where the business owner spends half the day on the shop floor, without adding a meeting.

The study covers 3,149 employees and 223 managers at a restaurant chain [5], and the transferable point is one: what matters is what the manager does after the idea, because proposing depends on how safe people feel speaking up.

In a family business, that sense of safety is a repeated gesture: the business owner who, after the Monday walk through the department, writes on the board next to each new proposal the date it will be evaluated does more in five minutes than a speech about ideas.

Each of the three visible things has its place:

• The proposal — on the board, with name and date.
• The criteria — on the grid hung next to it, before the first proposal.
• The response — next to the proposal, with its date.

Ten minutes at the end of a meeting that already exists are enough (effective business meetings): the board and the response are internal communication from the shop floor to the office and back, the direction most often missing.

In Italy, 24.4% of small companies (10-49 employees, 2022 data) struggle to find soft skills "such as the ability to work in a team, solve problems and handle critical situations" [2]: the board gets the people already in the company to practice them.

What brings in the second proposal is the first one evaluated on the board on the day written next to it: involvement is observed afterward, not requested beforehand.

Ten examples of small improvement ideas you can implement within a month

Between a proposal that asks for a new machine and one that moves a shelving unit two meters, which is more likely to be implemented within a month?

The second, and it isn't a lesser proposal: in 2024, 47.8% of the hires planned by Italian companies were hard to fill, almost 64% among skilled workers [6] — the person who knows that shelving unit is the hardest to replace, and their proposal costs almost nothing.

The proposals that reach the board in the first month are small, and that's fine: the right size for a proposal is one the department can implement on its own.

The table below collects ten examples with who proposes it, what it costs, how much time it takes and who implements it.

They serve to calibrate your eye: a small proposal on the board is worth more than a big idea voiced in a meeting.

These are typical examples, not documented cases: the size of proposal a board receives in its first months, from the professional practice to the hundred-person company.

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Out of about 5.5 million planned hires in Italy in 2024, the share that was hard to fill, 26.4% in 2019, reaches 53.7% in manufacturing; among the skills required with high importance, teamwork applies to 58% of hires and problem solving to 42-43% [6]: every row of the table puts those skills to work without looking for them on the market.

Ten examples are ten proposals to evaluate: the grid says yes quickly to these and explains the no to the others.

Evaluating proposals with a five-criteria grid and explaining the no's too

Evaluating a proposal by eye in two minutes or with a five-item grid in ten: what changes for the person who wrote it?

Only one thing changes, and it's the one that decides whether the next proposal will come: with the grid, the no has a readable reason; without the grid, the no looks like a judgment on the person.

The grid serves less to choose than to explain: five criteria, a scale from 1 to 3, a score that anyone in the department can reconstruct.

Cost, time, impact, reversibility and who implements it are enough for almost all the small proposals that reach the board in the first year.

This section describes the five criteria, the fast-lane rule and who sits at the table during the evaluation.

The Proposal Evaluation Grid is read row by row — 1 is the lightest condition, 3 the heaviest — and the scores aren't added up: that's what makes the no explainable.

• Cost — how much is spent, time included: 1 almost nothing, 3 a purchase or several days.
• Time — 1 within a week, 3 more than a month.
• Impact — how many people and activities it affects, how often: 1 one workstation, 3 the whole department every day.
• Reversibility — can you go back in a day? 1 yes, 3 no.
• Who implements it — is there a name, and is it the person who proposed it? 1 yes, 3 no.

For the shelving, three rows are enough: cost 1 and time 1 (half a day), reversible in a day, implemented by the department with the shift supervisor's name.

That's the fast lane: cost 1, reversibility 1 and a name in the fifth row are enough to proceed, and on the board you write "yes, by [date]."

The others are evaluated in a decision meeting with the person who proposed, the person who will implement it and the business owner or department manager: in a fifteen-person family business it's the department table, on Friday, where the business owner doesn't assign the scores alone and the person who proposed hears the reasons as they're written down.

If two proposals compete for the same problem, or one has alternatives, the grid says whether to do it, not which one: for that there's the decision matrix.

For the person who wrote the proposal, the no changes: "cost 3, time 3" can be discussed; a judgment is simply endured.

Closing the loop: responding to the person who proposed by a date, even with a no

An accepted proposal with no written response, or a rejected proposal with the reason on the board: which of the two brings in the next proposal?

The second: in the case studied by van Dijk and van den Ende, 25% of proposals were accepted and 80% of those implemented within two months, with the status visible to the person who had proposed [4] — it's the response, not the acceptance, that keeps the system alive.

A proposal without a response is the suggestion box under another name.

Closing the loop means writing on the board, by a date set in advance, one of four responses: we'll do it by day X, we'll do it after Y, no for this reason, we'll try it for two weeks and then decide.

This section describes the four responses, who signs them and how to keep the log without software.

The deadline is written next to the proposal; an example rule a company might set is ten working days for the fast lane and thirty for the others, and having it written down matters more than the number itself.

The four responses, with their wording:

• Yes — "by [date], [name] implements it."
• Yes, but later — "after [event or date]," with the reason for the delay.
• No — "because [grid criterion]": a criterion, not the person.
• Trial — "two weeks, then we decide," for reversible proposals (formal cycle: PDCA in the glossary).

For the shelving, the response on the board is "Yes — by Friday, the department implements it," told to the worker who wrote it before they read it.

The response is two gestures: public on the board, where the others read it, and personal, told to the person who proposed with the care of giving feedback to team members; silence is read as a no.

The log is the board itself, with an "outcome" column and a date: once a month you count proposals received, closed on time and implemented.

A 2016 review (23 critical success factors, 9 criteria) concludes that the difficulty with suggestion schemes isn't launching them but sustaining them over time [7].

What brings in the next proposal is the response read on the board by the promised date, even when it's a no: the mistakes in the next section are ways of not giving it.

Common mistakes in collecting proposals and the signal that reveals them on the board

A cash reward for every proposal or a written response by the promised date: which of the two still holds up after six months?

In the research reported by van Dijk and van den Ende, companies with rewards a hundred times higher received 1% of the proposals compared with companies that paid much less [4]: money alone doesn't drive proposals.

The mistakes don't show in the launch speech: they show on the board after three months, as empty columns or columns full of "pending."

Seven recurring mistakes, each with the signal that reveals it and the cheapest fix.

The signal in each row can be read on the board, without interviews and without questionnaires.

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After six months, it's the written response that holds up, not the reward: the most frequent signal is the "pending" column getting longer, and what's missing isn't a better board, it's the response.

Limits and conditions of applicability

The ten- and thirty-day deadlines are an example rule a company can set for itself, not a data point: the sources cited don't indicate a response deadline.

The academic sources describe contexts different from a family business's shop floor — a 2,000-employee plant [4], a restaurant chain [5], an international review [7] — and the mechanism has been adapted for scale by the editorial team; the relationships they report are observed associations, not proven causes.

From Detert and Burris [5], only the points contained in the abstract are used — the follow-up given to ideas, the perceived safety of speaking up, the stronger effect on the best employees — and the sample (3,149 employees, 223 managers) is the one stated in the abstract.

From Lasrado et al. [7], only the review's single point is used — sustaining a scheme over time is harder than launching it — and the claim that a response by a date is the cheapest factor is the editorial team's reading, not a finding of the review.

The comparison on rewards is a secondhand data point, reported by van Dijk and van den Ende [4], and should be read as an order of magnitude.

The ten examples in the table are hypothetical: costs and times are orders of magnitude, and they change in a different company.

The ISTAT question on practices to attract or retain staff is asked of Italian companies with more than 9 employees [2]: the 13.9% refers to small companies (10-49 employees), not micro-businesses.

The mechanism assumes a problem already visible to the people doing the work and proposals the department can implement: for problems that require root cause analysis, or for choices among several alternatives, other tools are needed.

FAQ

Why does the workplace suggestion box stay empty?

Because of three flaws: whoever evaluates is far from the person who knows the problem, there's no response date, and the evaluation remains invisible to the person who wrote, who next time doesn't write.

A three-field board with a signature, criteria hung next to it and a written response date fixes all three flaws.

How do you involve employees in improvement without adding a meeting?

By keeping three things visible: the proposal on the board with name and date, the criteria by which it will be evaluated, and the response with its date.

Ten minutes at the end of a meeting that already exists are enough to read the new proposals and assign the dates.

What are examples of improvement ideas that can be implemented within a month?

Moving a shelving unit next to the assembly station, adding a mandatory field to the order form, attaching an end-of-shift checklist or a photo of the correct setup to the machine, setting a time slot for receiving goods.

They cost from zero to a few dozen euros and the department implements them.

What is a proposal evaluation grid?

A sheet with five criteria — cost, time, impact, reversibility, who implements it — and a score from 1 to 3 for each, filled in with the person who proposed present.

It serves to say yes quickly to small proposals and to justify the no with a criterion, not with a judgment on the person.

Practical summary

Hang a three-field board where the work happens — what I observed, which process, what I would do differently — with a mandatory signature.

Hang the five-criteria grid next to it before the first proposal arrives, and write down the rule on the response deadline.

Read the new proposals at the end of the walk through the department and write next to each one the date it will be evaluated.

Fill in the grid with the person who proposed present; low cost, reversibility and a name send the proposal into the fast lane.

Write one of the four responses on the board by the date and tell it to the person; once a month, count proposals received, closed on time and implemented.

Conclusion

Improvement proposals aren't a question of ideas, they're a question of response: a proposal that's written down, evaluated with known criteria and closed by a date exists; all the others remain things said during a break.

The three-field board, the five-criteria grid and the four responses are the minimum mechanism; the system that contains them — the cycle, its rituals, its measures — is described in the guide to continuous improvement in the workplace.

When a proposal isn't enough and the problem requires root cause analysis, the complete path is in the guide to business problem solving.

A department where the shelving is moved within a week of being proposed, and where the person who proposed it reads the yes with the date on the board, produces the second proposal without anyone asking for it.

With almost one in two hires hard to fill in Italy [6], the ideas of the people already in the company are the improvement that costs the least and that no competitor can hire away.

Sources and references

[1] Treccani, entry "Proposta", Vocabolario on line, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Available at: https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/proposta/

[2] ISTAT, "Censimento permanente delle imprese 2023: primi risultati", press release, November 14, 2023 (reference year 2022; about 280,000 companies with 3 or more employees, representative of 1,021,618 units). Available at: https://www.istat.it/comunicato-stampa/censimento-permanente-delle-imprese-2023-primi-risultati/ — PDF: https://www.istat.it/it/files/2023/11/REPORTCensimprese.pdf

[3] Treccani, entry "Suggerimento", Vocabolario on line, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Available at: https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/suggerimento/

[4] van Dijk, C. and van den Ende, J., "Suggestion systems: transferring employee creativity into practicable ideas", R&D Management, 32(5), 387-395, 2002. DOI 10.1111/1467-9310.00270. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9310.00270

[5] Detert, J. R. and Burris, E. R., "Leadership Behavior and Employee Voice: Is the Door Really Open?", Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869-884, 2007. DOI 10.5465/amj.2007.26279183. Available at: https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2007.26279183

[6] Unioncamere – Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali, Sistema Informativo Excelsior, "La domanda di professioni e di formazione delle imprese italiane nel 2024", 2024. Available at: https://excelsior.unioncamere.net/pubblicazioni/2024/domanda-di-professioni-e-di-formazione-delle-imprese-italiane-nel-2024 — PDF: https://excelsior.unioncamere.net/sites/default/files/pubblicazioni/2024/Domanda_professioni_formazione_imprese.pdf

[7] Lasrado, F., Arif, M., Rizvi, A. and Urdzik, C., "Critical success factors for employee suggestion schemes: a literature review", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 24(2), 315-339, 2016. DOI 10.1108/IJOA-04-2014-0753. Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijoa-04-2014-0753/full/html