Engage your employees, and you will reap measured dollar rewards.

British Telecom (BT) uses an online idea jar for employees. Accordingly to Personnel Today (BT calls for employees' ideas), this idea jar has saved the BT nearly £100m (US$173 million) over the past four years.

BT Ideas provides a formal framework for encouraging staff to be creative and rewards them for any ideas that it uses.

Suggestions policy and strategy manager Arthur Wright said the project is being developed over the next year to try to increase the proportion of ideas implemented from 10 to 15 per cent.

The scheme uses the Internet and intranet to promote the initiative, but an incubator website is to be introduced to allow people to get in touch with other staff for help on developing their ideas.

Wright said, "People are immensely creative and want to contribute to the business - whether it's with little changes that make the job more satisfying or big changes than can have a dramatic effect."

Rewards can be significant - the company paid out £400,000 (about US$700,000) to employees last year.

Wright said, "Ideas don't come for free. If we have a good idea that saves us money or generates significant income, then we are delighted to reward the originator with 10 per cent of the savings or additional income up to a maximum of £30,000."

If executed properly, empowering employees as change agents can deliver powerful benefits – both for the company and for individual employees.

IBM has a similar program on their intranet called IDEAS – a heritage program for collecting suggestions online to improve a process or tool or product. Employees are encouraged to submit innovative ideas. All submissions undergo a cost analysis for potential savings. Recommendations good enough to implement are rewarded with cash payouts to employees. IDEAS delivered $17.1M in value in 2001 alone.

One of my personal favorites is the Sodexho USA Sales SuperSleuth (recently highlighted in our case study and webinar Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA.  SuperSleuth is an intranet web page and application that encourages employees to submit sales leads and prospective clients via the intranet. The SuperSleuth intranet page generate cash rewards of up to $1000 for the person making the submission. Sodexho says it has contributed to a 100% increase in sales leads in the past year. Let me repeat: a 100% increase in company sales leads. In fact, the SuperSleuth tool has led to US$90 million dollars in managed volume (net client sales including sales by client). Proof positive of a killer application.

If you engage them, employees will come – and show you the money.