In a traditional office environment, crowdsourcing ideas can take a variety of forms. While suggestion boxes och whiteboards är den mest tangible ways of gathering input, water cooler chats and drive-by desk conversations also present frequent, albeit informal, opportunities för brainstorming or vetting idéer.
But as the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with an abrupt shift to remote work, tangible and in-person ways of crowdsourcing employees inte längre var ett alternativ - and for some organizations, they may never be again.
- According to a recent Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of Americans say they’re working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic — and three out of five prefer to stay there after public health restrictions are lifted.
- I juni, mer än 26% of Fortune 500 CEOs said that at least 90% of their workforce will never return to their usual workplace.
Faced with those statistics, you may be searching for ways till motivate, engage, and connect with your remote anställda. In this post, you’ll discover how a few of our customers är göring just that, medan solving real customer problems and even pivoting on their company strategy.
Why Crowdsourcing for Remote Employees
The rise in remote work — and the desire to continue working from home — deliver a one-two punch to organizations accustomed to in-person meetings and paper-based ways of crowdsourcing ideas.
Even if you already had electronic ways of crowdsourcing employees’ ideas in place prior to the pandemic, it’s important to find a purpose-built tool that facilitates the same type of interactions as an in-person brainstorming session — i.e., capturing, evaluating, prioritizing, and collaborating on ideas — so you can retain the human element as much as possible.
And here’s why that matters: While working remotely looks different, feels olika, och är olika than working from a traditional office, din anställda still have the same invaluable knowledge, regardless of where they log on to their computers.
Yes, they är blending childcare and homeschooling with working hours (if they’re moms, then disproportionately so) och yes, they är often inställning av up their “office” på a makeshift spot, like the köksbord eller . spare bedroom.
But hear this: Your employees är still the closest to the problems in your organization - och de är den mest capable of coming up with powerful insights thatt kan hjälp shape your company strategy.
Consider these examples:
- The customer care representative who handles customer complaints now has even more insight into the process for escalating issues, due to the volume of calls he receives på grund av förseningar i leveransen.
- The software engineer who crafts the user experience for your company’s mobile app now has even more insight into which parts of the resa are causing friction, potentially causing current or prospective customers to switch to your competitor.
- The account executive or renewal specialist who talks with customers every day now has even more insight into what’s hållaing her accounts up at night, from first-hand information on how your top customers are pivoting to meet demands or survive in a chaotic market to emerging trends in their industry.
At Planview, we’ve been hearing, coaching, and applauding hur our customers är crowdsourcing idéer to shape their strategy, not just in response to COVID-19 Utmaningar, men long before the current crisis. We’re proud to share a few of their stories in this post.
Employee Empowerment at Premera Blue Cross
The innovation team at Premera, a Blue Cross Blue Shield healthcare provider in Seattle, Wash., var tasked with creating solutions to address the needs of the twenty-first century healthcare consumer. To guide their strategy forward, the team decided the best ideas would come from the people who interact with their customers the most – Premera’s employees.
With about 28 percent of the Organisation working remotely, traditional methods for crowdsourcing ideas, such as the employee suggestion box, limited their reach in diversity and inclusion. They decided to leverage Planview Spigit to focus on driving true culture change.
For their first challenge, Premera Frågaed their employees: “As we make healthcare work better, how might we provide positive surprises to our customers and delight them?”
The fråga engaged a phenomenal 73 percent of the organization, amassing more than 400 ideas and nearly 11,000 votes. “Spigit has helped us unleash innovation across our enterprise. It has given us an interactive platform for crowdsourcing and nurturing ideators, not just ideas,” said Patti Brooke, Director of Innovation på Premera.
Read: Premera Blue Cross Transforms their Business by Nurturing a Culture of Innovation
Scaling Globally with Aristocrat
Aristocrat, a leading provider of gaming and casino solutions, has tripled the size of its workforce over the past five years. They created their “thinkBIGGER” initiative to challenge their employees to come up with ideas around solving customer problems and the future of the gaming industry.
Med their 7,000 anställda spread across the globe, they needed a way to scale their innovation program to not only provide each employee with a voice, but also to ensure transparency in the process. Using Planview Spigit, they have created an interactive hub för crowdsourcing av idéer, som skulle göra det möjligt för dem att to collect, prioritize, and vet ideas at scale.
Within three months of launching, Aristocrat har been able to reach its global workforce and capture thousands of ideas, some of som have already turned into prototypes for testing.
“Real innovation can come from anywhere, usually from people who aren’t afraid to challenge the norm but may not have felt like their voice mattered. We’ve changed that," Roberto Coppola, VP of Corporate Innovation at Aristocrat.
Read: Aristocrat Changes the Game by Giving Every Employee the Opportunity to Solve Problems
Customer Engagement with Ryan Companies
Two of the four pillars of Ryan Companies’ Insights and Innovation team är se till att alla anställda är engagerade och öka kundupplevelsen by becoming trusted partners. It was important to them that not all ideas came from executives, no matter deras location or role in the company. What was more exciting was how they paired the execution of these two pillars för crowdsourcing ideas — engagement and diversity — av leveraging Spigit.
First, they Frågaed each client Om the problems they faced. Then, they used each client’s svar till craft internal challenge questions for their client’s anställda som var based on the high-priority needs.
The winning ideas from each challenge were presented to each client in a Shark-tank style challenge format. With clients and employees distributed across the country, Spigit provided a platform for all parties to collaborate in an efficient manner.
“It was a huge hit with everyone involved and went a long way in not only driving our own culture of engagement and innovation but inspiring our clients to do the same. They think of us as a partner that is committed to solving their problems, and as a customer-driven company, nothing makes us happier," Mike Prefling, former VP of Insights and Innovation at Ryan Companies.
Read: Ryan Companies Builds a Culture of Innovation by Supporting Employee and Customer Engagement
Uniting Remote Employees with Crowdsourcing
Whether your company’s transition to remote work is temporary or permanent, anställda är craving ways to come together right now. Fun, virtual team-building events might be the answer. But we’ve seen that employees rally when they feel they’re part of something big.
Everybody wants to be able to look back at their career and say they played a role in a product or company that gjort substantial change.
Looking for more information on running crowdsourcing programs that matter? Download the 2019 State of Crowdsourced Innovation Report to learn powerful insights and trends, see how your innovation program compares to others, and take away best practices to help you on your innovation journey.
