Workers Engagement through Employee Driven Ideas

Abstract

Incorporating collecting ideas from engaged employees has become a strategy in many modern companies. Managers and specialists from different fields believe that incorporating employees into decision-making, sharing company objectives and involving employees is beneficial both for the company and its workers. The aim of this thesis is to explore the importance and principles of employee engagement and employee idea presenting and create a recommendation for the commissioning case company, Posti Oy. The theoretical framework provides information on the importance of employee engagement and related topics needed to successfully incorporate ideas to a company’s organizational structure. Successfully implemented employee ideas are presented to prove the possibility of ground-level workers making an impact on the whole company. Idea collection and generation methods are presented to examine which ones would be the most suitable for the case company. Through semi-structured interviews with employees and specialists with leadership experience, the author identified key themes and potential improvements which can be done to improve employee engagement and their role in the company. Interviews supported the idea that allowing employees to share their thoughts, give feedback and present ideas can become essential in fostering employee engagement. Interviews showed that employee engagement must be already on certain level to allow workers to freely share their opinion. This study identified core aspects which are needed to be reconsidered and improved. The conclusion was based on the opinion of employees as well as the management’s intention to engage employees. Recommendations provided to the commissioning company, Posti Oy, serve as an outcome of the whole study and research conducted by the author.