Bring back the suggestion box

Anonymous suggestion boxes used to be common in workplaces, regardless of whether that workplace was an office, a factory, a supermarket, or anything else. Whether or not anybody ever left suggestions in them (and, perhaps more importantly, whether management ever read them) is a moot point. That they existed, however, did at least offer employees the opportunity to express their views on what a company might be getting wrong, how problems could be fixed, or operations improved. It might in some places have served as nothing more than a token nod to the value of an employee’s views, but it created the illusion that management wanted to hear from staff (who in many cases might be in a position to spot issues or opportunities before management).

It’s been a while since I saw a suggestion box. Do they still exist? I know of one firm which runs an ‘anonymous drop’ portal where staff can share information, report issues, suggest changes. But it does appear to be a minority. Staff are increasingly expected to share publicly, be it on a Zoom call, an office stand-up, or a more formal meeting. All well and good, but the problem is that the best ideas (especially if they involve major changes that might impact others, or which question current practices) rarely get shared in collective environments such as meetings. It’s time for the suggestion box to make a comeback.

The value of firms listening to staff (and giving them a platform to communicate their thoughts anonymously) cannot be overstated. Staff involved in day-to-day operations are usually closer to customers than management; that counts for a great deal.

There is a reason the good stuff stays unsaid. Speak up in a meeting and you risk treading on the toes of whoever designed the process you have just called out (and it’s often the most senior person in the room). Question somebody’s pet project (no matter how dysfunctional it might be) and that person might send you to Coventry for a considerable period of time. Suggest that the thing everyone has spent two years building might be pointing in the wrong direction and, well, good luck with that. Most people, sensibly enough, keep their heads down. Clever observations, those that might save a company which needs reinvention, get lost between a desk and the meeting room.

Anonymity solves part of this, but, it must be said, not all of it. A drop box, digital or otherwise, still asks the employee to do the writing, and anything committed to paper (or a portal) leaves a record. People worry (not unreasonably so) that a distinctive turn of phrase, or a grievance only one person could possibly hold, might give them away. So they will all too often tone it down, or simply think twice and say nothing. A quiet conversation would serve them far better than a box, preferably with somebody who cannot sack them or assign them the dullest tasks for the foreseeable future.

This is where it might be worth bringing in an outside team (indeed, it doesn’t need to be a whole team of consultants, just one skilled reinvention practitioner should do it).

Bring in someone from beyond the firm who cares not a jot about who might get a bit miffed, and sit them down with staff one at a time.

Staff will in all likeliness be far more willing to tell a stranger things they would never breathe in front of a manager. And while it might partly be about discretion, it is also about the fact that the stranger has absolutely nothing to gain from the things he might be told.

What also makes an outsider attractive in such scenarios is simply being able to listen, independently, to the voice of a collective. One member of staff’s grumble is easy to wave away with nary a nod of recognition. If several people make much the same point in private, however, with none of them aware the others have done so, then that’s a great deal harder to ignore. An external reinvention consultant can collect all of that with the minimum of fuss and hand their findings to management, minus anything that might point the finger at a particular individual. This means that staff not only get heard, but that nobody gets left hung out to dry either.

Of course, if management treats the entire exercise as it once treated the suggestion box, as a ‘nice-to-have’ receptacle to be admired but never emptied, then it’s not going to work and there is little point in even trying. Listening has always been the easy bit, acting on what you find out the more difficult part. But it is precisely acting on what you hear (especially when what you hear is that your own strategy is the problem) that can lead to reinvention actually happening, and the creation of a genuine reinvention culture within a firm. Getting stuff in the suggestion box was never as important as acting on what went in it.