The Role of Employee Suggestion Systems (ESSs) On Organizational Development in the 21st Century

The inability of organizations to survive and sustain their operations due to the sky rocketed competitive environment in the 21st century has called for this paper in order to examine the role suggestion systems play across organizations in harvesting employee opinions and ideas which are screened, evaluated and implemented through a structured committee which in turn save and reduce cost, improve performance and productivity, boost morale, strengthen communication mechanism, among others. The functioning of this system is highly influenced by the organizational culture and structure. This paper adopted a descriptive approach for gathering data and analyzing same. Issues covered include characteristics of good suggestion system, suggestion systems components, benefits of employee suggestion systems, cultural and structural factors affecting the functioning of suggestion systems, organizational structure of suggestion systems, challenges facing suggestion systems and factors responsible for successful suggestion systems. The paper concludes that for any organization to effectively deliver, capture the market and have a competitive edge in the 21st century and beyond, such organization must have a suggestion system in place to solicit opinions and ideas from its employees.