The suggestion usually shows up after the paperwork is done. An owner has put a vision, a mission, and company commitments in writing, and then someone comes forward and says, “I’ve been reluctant until now to make this suggestion, but I see something that could be very valuable long term.” Notice the words “until now.” The idea was already there, waiting until saying it felt safe.
I hear some version of that often enough to wonder how many ideas like it are sitting in your building right now. A January 2025 survey of 1,375 U.S. employees, run by Ipsos for Eagle Hill Consulting (opens in new tab), suggests the number is not small. It found that 78% regularly trade ideas with their colleagues about working more efficiently, and 66% said they had taken those ideas to their organization. Yet 41% said their organization rarely or never asks for their ideas for improvement.
The rest of the numbers explain the gap. Only 38% said their organization has a clearly outlined process for submitting ideas. The other 63% described a vague one (40%) or none at all (23%). Another 42% said they don’t feel empowered to make changes based on their own ideas, and 38% said their ideas were unlikely to be implemented. People have the ideas and are discussing them. A large share can’t see a reliable route from those conversations to the person who could act.
Hold the survey to its limits. Eagle Hill is a consulting firm, as I am, and this report covers ideas for efficiency specifically, not every kind of suggestion an employee might have. The answers are self-reported from a single survey fielded in January 2025, and the report page I read doesn’t give a margin of error. “The organization” could mean an owner, a manager, or a form, and the survey can’t tell you which one each person had in mind. It also can’t tell you what is true in your company. What it does show is a gap between the ideas that exist and the ones that arrive, wide enough that I would assume it’s there in your building until someone shows me otherwise.
Trusting your team means that you’re willing to look the other way when people make a mistake.
— Gary Henson, Consultant
My read, and it is only a read, is that a written commitment changes what a suggestion costs. An employee who tells an owner with no written standard, “I think we should do this differently,” is setting her judgment against his, and he may hear it as criticism. An employee who says, “this would help us keep the third company commitment,” is pointing at something the owner already put his name to. Nobody has to be wrong, and the suggestion becomes about the business instead of about the boss. If your commitments are thin or missing, writing company commitments employees will remember is where I would begin, because it gives people something to point at besides you.
Trust is the slower piece. Some of the employees I meet have already had a taste of this kind of work, and they’re usually dubious that ownership will change. What they don’t know yet is that a workplace that’s better for them also means more accountability for everyone, the owner included. So the first visible sign I look for is the owner standing in front of all the employees and admitting that he or she hasn’t used the tools and the communication available to get the best out of each person. After that comes a harder test. Someone tries something new and gets it wrong, and the owner has to acknowledge the effort and say what to do next time. A mistake handled that way becomes training you don’t pay for a second or third time. A lecture at that moment tells everyone watching what the next idea will cost them.
of surveyed U.S. employees said their organization has no process (23%) or only a vague one (40%) for submitting ideas to improve efficiency. Eagle Hill Consulting, 2025 Workplace Efficiency Survey (Ipsos, January 2025, n=1,375) →
In your business, I would skip the suggestion box, because it leaves the employee as the one taking the risk. Start with the meeting. If you already hold regular meetings with everyone required to attend, build them around three questions: what’s working, what’s not working, and what’s missing. Ask all three, out loud, in the same room. The questions work because the answer is about the business, and nobody has to say a word about you to give one. If you don’t hold them yet, that gap is itself something your people have noticed, and regular meetings are part of what the Inside-Out Method puts in place.
Then give ideas one place to go, with one person who answers them and a date by which the employee hears back. That is a small version of what 63% of the surveyed employees said they didn’t have. And decide, before the meeting, what you will say the first time someone answers honestly about something you don’t want to hear. Write the sentence down. “Thank you, tell me more” works. Defending yourself doesn’t, and everyone in the room will be watching which one you pick. Put the sentence on your agenda next to the three questions before you walk in.
