Step 1. Start with priorities: what ideas are important to you
Simply telling your team to ‘come up with ideas’ will not yield results.
Employees may not understand what exactly they should be thinking about or what constitutes a useful idea for the business.
Therefore, the first step is to set a direction: explain what ideas you are looking for and why.
At the Three Sisters clinic, the priority is safety and quality of medical care.
As part of this, there is a process called ‘incident collection’.
The idea is to collect medical staff errors without judgement, analyse them, and introduce new processes that help avoid mistakes.
When a business has a clear understanding of what it wants to influence, it is easier for employees to offer what is needed.
For example, employees know that it is important for the company to improve service quality and speed.
Then they will come up with ideas to improve these indicators.
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Step 2. Create a clear mechanism for collecting ideas
Chaotic collection of suggestions from employees will not work.
A clear and simple structure is important: how and to whom an employee can submit an idea.
All corridors of the Three Sisters clinic have QR codes that can be used to report an incident.
For example, a fall and fracture, incorrect doctor’s appointment, or a patient’s complaint that they have an inconvenient schedule for classes and procedures.
All incidents are recorded and further analysed by type of harm and cause.
And everyone who reports an incident must suggest an idea on what to do to prevent it from happening again.
Step 3. Implement a non-blaming culture
If employees are afraid of criticism from their boss, they will remain silent.
Therefore, it is important to develop a non-blaming culture in business.
That is, when a person notices a mistake, they should understand that if they report the incident, they will not be punished, but thanked for their attentiveness.
The more often employees report mistakes, the better it is for the business.
What to read about a non-blaming culture In 2024, the Three Sisters clinic recorded 700 incidents, and in 2025, there were already a thousand in nine months.
This increase indicates that employees and the team are communicating with management.
They are involved, understand the importance of business goals, and strive to report incidents and prevent them.
A culture of open discussion of mistakes helps to avoid losing money, customers, and business reputation.
The main thing.
Don’t wait for useful ideas to appear on their own.
Ideas don’t come out of thin air.
They appear when employees know: What the business’s priorities are: what is most important for the company at the moment, what its goals are, and what needs to be developed.
Where to bring ideas: what mechanism the company uses to collect employee suggestions.
Why it is important to talk about mistakes: no one will punish you for them; on the contrary, the more mistakes you notice and come up with ways to fix them, the better for the business.
How can you get feedback from your manager: this can be through one-on-one meetings or team discussions of ideas.
If this system works, employees begin to think like partners rather than executors.
This is the main step towards growing the business through the initiatives and ideas of employees.
Hope you’ve found our article, How can you teach employees to come up with ideas that will help the business grow? useful.
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