Your employees probably have many good ideas. But getting those ideas out in the open and acting on them requires your initiative. Roy Baum, President of the Employee Involvement Association (EIA), says: "Management doesn't listen to workers unless there is a structured system."

And the potential benefits of maintaining a structured system, a vital employee suggestion program, far outweigh the costs.

Employers with suggestion programs save $28,000 to $48,000 per 100 employees per year. (Statistics are gathered annually from members by the EIA, formerly the National Association of Suggestion Systems.)

If you don't have an employee suggestion program...or if your program needs a facelift...here are suggestions.

You don't really have a suggestion program until all your employees know: (1) What you want. (2) Who to tell. (3) What they'll get in return.

Roy Baum, president of the EIA, recommends that you be "definitive in your rules right from the start." He adds that suggestion program guidelines should be part of your employee handbook or detailed in a separate publication on the program. Make sure your plan is fair, adequately funded, and voluntary. And don't present it as an employee benefit.

Decide what you want. Example: "Our aim is to come up with innovations that reduce costs while building value. We'll never take value out of our products." This makes it clear that product-cheapening ideas are not the goal.

Decide whom your employees tell. Often suggestions are submitted through a supervisor on a preprinted form and signed by both the contributor and supervisor. Offer writing assistance to solicit ideas from workers who have difficulty expressing their thoughts in writing.

Emphasize to your managers and supervisors the critical role they play. They can stifle your efforts to tap worker creativity if they respond to every suggestion with a listing of reasons why it won't work. Their role instead is to come up with ways an idea might work.