Simple but Powerful Ways to Generate Ideas and Track Satisfaction

Michael Fraser is someone who gets the power of using technology to put knowledge to work within the organization. He has held a number of positions since I first met him. Currently he is the Recovery Act Program Manager for the Loan Guarantee Program Office at the Department of Energy.  He recently wrote to me:

One experience I wanted to share was about employee ideas for improvement. On a former project known as CHRIS, one of the major subsystems was Employee Self Service which was a home grown web site built in Cold Fusion. All employees and contractors had access although the contractors’ was limited to a smaller subset of functions.

On the site, we had two electronic processes: the first collected feedback on the website and related websites supporting the CHRIS portfolio using an online form. The questions were arranged using a 5 point scale so the data could be collected and analyzed for trends over time and basically measured customer satisfaction. We monitored this in real time and often received good ideas from end users which we then ranked by priority. Sometimes the feedback was just venting over various policies such as the CIO determined password policy which we didn’t control, we just implemented it. The suggesters received an email thanking them for their feedback and a brief description of our process for evaluation. When necessary, we contacted them with followup questions. The data was then tracked over time and reported as part of a balanced scorecard.

The second process was an online suggestion box. The scope was all of DOE and all issues, not just CHRIS related ones. It had a 10 question form that generated a minibusiness case

If the answers were provided, we were better able to identify the correct office to review the merit of the suggestion.

We also fed these ideas into our quarterly program planning processes.

Overall, I think both work well and add additional channels for endusers to give feedback and offer suggestions about potential improvements. They are not complex technologically but have value because they are simple to use, and are easily accessible on a website that most employees use to get their pay stubs.

Thanks to Michael for sharing this story. I especially enjoyed hearing how they used technology (but keeping it simple) to generate information and metrics about “intangible” but critical aspects of the organization–employee and customer satisfaction.

I am hoping to include more real-life stories going forward. Please let me know if you have one to share!