Fergus Marupen, chief human resources executive at Absa, speaks to Margaret Harris

How important is it for employees to feel that their ideas are taken seriously?

A key element of employee engagement centres on the ability of an organisation to be flexible and open to new ideas and innovation. It adds greatly to an employee's feeling of job satisfaction when their ideas are considered. It's also a fact that employees who utilise and engage with the processes, products and systems every day, probably have the best solutions.

What is the best way for a company to ensure employees can put forward ideas ?

Technology is a great enabler to manage ideas across a large organisation such as Absa. Knowledge management tools used in Absa allow employees to assist one another in solving daily business challenges - these ideas and suggestions are collated into a database of best practices and common sense solutions that support employees on a daily basis.

Should employees be rewarded if their ideas are used?

The true success in sustainable innovation from employees remains the satisfaction of an idea that has been implemented. Obviously a reward also encourages participation, although it does not always a guarantee that the idea will be really innovative. We have internal recognition programmes that celebrate an individual's contribution in a public forum and reward employees for good ideas.

Is it better to ask for any suggestions, or should the company ask employees to deal with specific issues?

We have been open to all ideas from employees, but have a sophisticated back-end process that channels ideas to subject matter experts who are able to evaluate them. We give employees the opportunity to address issues that we might not even realise exist out there.