Establish Success Metrics

Employee Ideation Program Planning—Step 7 of 7

There are many ways of measuring success for your Employee Ideation Program (EIP). Right after you launch, you will probably track numbers of key activities related to your program, also known as metrics. The following “success metrics” are a good place to start:

• Number of ideas submitted
• Number of comments posted
• Number of votes / ratings
• Number of ideas evaluated
• Number of unique visitors per date range (daily, monthly, etc.) and total unique visitors
• Average time spent on site
• Number of new users for each date range
• Or create your own metric

Once you have implemented ideas, consider collecting additional metrics that capture the effectiveness of your program. For example, measure the benefits of ideas that are implemented. These benefits will likely be both opinion-based (qualitative) and statistical and measurable (quantitative). Here is a sample list of potential benefits:

• Money saved
• Increased ability to meet a mission objective (i.e., security or public health awareness)
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Improved customer service

You may want to track the ideas you use so you can chart progress and give regular status updates. This allows you to capture the bigger picture of your EIP’s impact over time.

Next Step

This is the last step in planning for your Employee Ideation Program. Let’s move into the Implement phase by generating ideas.

Content Lead: Justin Herman
Page Reviewed/Updated: May 16, 2012