Produce new ideas – Quality made by staff
Internal suggestion system collects, evaluates and rewards employee ideas
Euromaster regularly performs employee surveys to improve employee satisfaction. A recurring result of these surveys was the wish for an internal suggestion system. Until now, there was no systematic way to collect, evaluate, and reward employee ideas or suggestions.
The challenge
Advanced planning was particularly important in order to implement a functioning, comprehensive employee suggestion system at a decentralized company like Euromaster with approximately 2,500 employees and 320 branches throughout Germany.
Suggestions would have to be formulated in a way that is understandable and, above all, appropriate in terms of content. Euromaster chose the JobRouter® digital process automation platform to implement this process. They were very confident that they would be able to meet all the requirements with this system and implement it as quickly as possible.
Advantages
Benefits for Management
- creation of an incentive system for employees
- employees potential is better tapped
- ensure fair and appropriate consideration, approving, and issuance of awards
- simplifies processing of suggestions
- escalation rules ensure a timely processing
- stronger involvement of employees promotes identification with the company
- increasing the success of the company
- enhances the professionalism of the company
Advantages
Benfits for employees
- Possibility to introduce ideas and suggestions
- Participation in the success of the company
- Rewards from the bonus incentive system
- Certainty that suggestions made will be actually processed
- Just and systematic flow of the process
- Automatic notification at important points, i.e. the clearance by the supervisor
Project details
- Client
- EUROMASTER
- Industry
- Tire retail and vehicle maintenance service
- Employees
- approx. 2500 employees
- Instances
- over 100 instances within 6 months
- Database
- MS SQL
- Ongoing processes
- Internal suggestion system, application for leave, ordering process, incoming invoice processing, accident report, customer approval, application for further training, ordering advertising materials/gifts, investment requests, credit limit request, processing new customers, requesting personnel, basic agreement, service/tire fee and several more.
The implementation
First, the human resources department met and defined the path that an employee suggestion should take through the company. During this planning phase it became clear that there were many opportunities for errors in the process, from wrong formulation, to supervisor review, to the selection of an appropriate reward. An analysis was made to identify possible points in the process where questions or ambiguities might come up and where steps should be inserted for clarity and control.
In addition, a bonus system was designed to increase employee motivation for suggestions and to reward ideas that ultimately contribute to the company's success. The requirements that came out of this planning phase flowed directly into the implementation of the process.
The result
Since the introduction of the internal suggestion system using JobRouter®, the company has enjoyed the active participation of its employees. JobRouter® is highly accepted and used intensively. In the six months since the system went live, far more than 100 suggestions were submitted by employees.
If an employee wants to submit a suggestion, they simply starts the "MasterIdea" process in JobRouter®, enter their idea into the free text field and hit send. The suggestion is first sent to the Head of Safety and Quality (HSQ) for review. At that point there may be questions which can be answered using the query function in JobRouter®. If there are no questions or all questions have been answered, the HSQ forwards the suggestion to the relevant supervisor. The suggestion is then returned to the HSQ as either approved or denied by the supervisor. Once approved, the suggestion reaches the respective department.
From request to approval and reward
In the course of approving the suggestion, the reviewer also selects a bonus from a prepared bonus matrix. This is handled in a separate step in the process.
Afterwards the suggestion, with it’s approvals, notes and bonus selection is send back to the HSQ who will check if all data is complete and forward it to the works council. A final vote concerning the bonus is held in a short meeting between the works council, the reviewer and the HSQ. Finally the HSQ presses the Send button one last time. After that, everything happens automatically. For example the personnel department will be informed about which bonus is to be paid to which employee and the employee receives a notification about the final approval and bonus.
There are escalation rules in the entire process, reminding everyone involved if they miss a deadline. Additionally, it is possible to request further information or send an instance step back at any point, i.e. if a wrong reviewer was selected. At every point of the process, the flow is designed to ensure that no gaps can occur and that the process runs correctly.
Short profile - Euromaster
The origins of Euromaster date back to the year 1919. After several changes of name and mergers in 2003, the company became what it is today - a market-leading expert in tires, wheels and automobile maintenance. Euromaster is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Michelin Group. In addition to Germany, Euromaster is represented in 14 other European countries with over 1,900 service centers and around 11,500 employees. The company sells approximately 10 million tires to more than 4.5 million customers each year. With its German headquarters in Kaiserslautern, Euromaster is currently represented in Germany by 300 of its own service centers and 15 franchise partners.