Link: $152,000 for Your Thoughts Harvard Business Online.
It's true. A $38,000-per-year employee devised a way to streamline an internal business process for her company, resulting in saving her company $304,000 in the first year of implementing her innovation. Her reward? Half of what she saved them - $152,000.
This article from the April issue of Harvard Business Review has some pretty good and interesting advice for companies wanting to promote innovation from their employees with monetary incentives. Let's face it, real incentives should really involve not only recognition, but money as well. If you think about how much is spent on outsourced consulting on cutting costs, improving productivity and implementing innovative practices, a lot of those resources could be invested internally on encouraging and supporting employees who are closest to the day-to-day details to think up great ideas and to follow through with a well-articulated implementation plan.
There are so many benefits to this kind of approach - not just for the obvious ones for the company but for employees as well. For those in non-commissioned salaries, where the only chance they can make more is at their performance reviews, it offers them a new challenge to make more money. It allows them equal opportunity to be entrepreneurial, thus pushing the comfort zones of being an "employee" and perhaps driving them up to even better performance.
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