The story of Avios, intrapreneurship and magnificent, magical lightbulbs.
The Avios Innovation Team were tasked with finding ways to improve the company in three key areas: Customer experience; speed and agility; and the use of big data.
The team knew that the key to sourcing great ideas was to listen to the people who know their business best - their employees.
But how could they engage them and encourage innovation?
We wanted to find a unique way to bring our people together. We needed to create a buzz and make it easy for them to share ideas with each other.
Hanna Greenfield, Emerging Technology Manager
Avios
The Avios team knew that running a campaign which allowed employees to see the idea generation process at work would help to drive interest amongst their workforce.
However, it was just as important to find a platform which made collecting and managing these insights fast and simple.
Microsoft Yammer was already being used across the company, so the solution became obvious – they created a group called 'Avios Ideas', allowing people to socialise ideas and get feedback from colleagues via Yammer.
The Yammer group acted as the heart of the employee ideas campaign that Avios cleverly called 'Light the Bulb'.
Giant lightbulbs were placed around the workplace and linked directly to the Yammer group and Sideways 6 idea management platform.
As soon as an idea was submitted on the group, they were picked up by Sideways 6 and the bulbs began flashing in a different colour according to the type of idea.
This sparked an immediate reaction around the office, encouraging others to submit their ideas and put the lightbulbs into action!
Here at Avios, we partner with companies who are constantly innovating, pushing the envelope and focused on the details. That’s why we chose Sideways 6.
Hanna Greenfield, Emerging Technology Manager
Avios
Despite being the first campaign of its kind at Avios, the challenge launched with gusto! Over a five-week period, almost 500 employees joined the Avios Ideas group and a total of 89 ideas were submitted.
Out of these ideas, 12 have since been sponsored. Avios is also encouraging sponsors to get the idea owners involved in the development and testing process going forwards.
The campaign also encouraged collaboration across the business, and the company-wide Light the Bulb selfie competition made sure that everybody was involved!
