Suggestion System

What a suggestion system is

A suggestion system (نظام الاقتراحات), also called an employee suggestion scheme, is a standing, announced channel through which any employee can put forward an idea for improving the work. It has a known route, a named body that considers what arrives, and a stated period within which the person who made the suggestion receives a reply.

What makes it a system is the commitment to reply that the organisation writes down for itself, not the box and not the online form. A channel that receives suggestions and never answers them is not an incomplete system. It is an archive, and the people using it can work that out within two cycles and stop writing.

In the texts we reviewed we found no provision that deals with suggestion systems by name, so we say neither that the law requires one nor that it prohibits one. Nor do we have a published measurement of the effect of suggestion systems on productivity or on employee engagement on which to base a claim either way.

What a suggestion system writes down before it opens

• Who may submit. Every employee or particular groups only; whether anonymous submissions are accepted; and what accepting them means, since an anonymous suggestion cannot be answered by name.
• What may be submitted. The scope of an acceptable suggestion, and what falls explicitly outside it. This is the clause that stops the channel turning into something it was never meant to be, and it is set out in detail below.
• Whom it reaches. A named body, not a general mailbox, because a general mailbox means that nobody owns it.
• How soon the reply comes. A written period, even when the reply is only that the idea is under consideration and when a decision will be made.
• What happens after acceptance. Who implements the idea, who pays for it, and how its author learns that it has been implemented. A suggestion that was accepted, never implemented and never reported back to its author does more harm than one that was declined clearly.

Where a suggestion system breaks: the arithmetic

A suggestion system is judged by rates, not by individual cases. Take an organisation of 300 employees in which the participation rate for a quarter reached 4%:

• Suggestions in the quarter: 300 × 4% = 12, which comes to 48 a year.
• Time spent on each one, between reading it, asking questions about it and writing a reply: 45 minutes. The total for the quarter is 12 × 45 = 540 minutes, which is 9 hours, or 36 hours a year.
• If 3 of them are implemented in the quarter, the implementation rate is 3 out of 12, which is 25%, and the cost of each implemented idea is 9 hours divided by 3, which is 3 hours of review.

These figures are an assumption made for the calculation. The definition of suggestion system sets no expected participation rate and no implementation rate, and the numbers here are a worked example to show where the channel breaks, not a benchmark or a recommendation.

The break comes when participation rises and review capacity does not. Suppose the committee meets monthly and settles 4 suggestions at each meeting. Its capacity is then 12 a quarter, exactly equal to what arrives. Participation then rises to 8%, which is 300 × 8% = 24 suggestions a quarter:

• The backlog added each quarter: 24 minus 12 = 12 suggestions.
• After four quarters: 12 × 4 = 48 suggestions waiting.
• The wait for anyone submitting at that point: 48 divided by a capacity of 12 a quarter = 4 quarters, a full year before their turn comes.

The outcome is that an internal campaign that doubles participation while review capacity stays fixed is the very thing that stops the channel. That is why the number fixed before launch is not the number of ideas hoped for but the review capacity: how many suggestions are decided each month, by whom, and out of which part of their working time. An organisation that leaves this unfixed has built itself a queue.

What does not belong in a suggestion system

One serious risk for a suggestion system is that it becomes the entry point for matters that have an entry point of their own, so that both are lost:

• A grievance against a decision. An employee’s complaint about a decision, a procedure or a penalty that concerns them is not a suggestion, and it has a separate route with separate time limits. Under Article 72 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل), a grievance against a disciplinary penalty is filed in writing with the competent body at the employer within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the date the worker was notified of the decision. That is the first step of the route the same Article sets out; the employer’s written decision on the grievance and the later objection before the labor courts each run on a separate period. A grievance that lands in the suggestion box has not, by landing there, been filed with the competent body, and the period keeps running while the worker waits for a reply to an “idea”.
• A report of a violation. Its subject is an event that needs to be investigated, and it needs handling that differs in confidentiality, in who may see it and in how quickly someone responds. Placed in a queue of improvement suggestions, it may be dealt with two months later. Its place is the corporate whistleblowing channel.

The remedy is a single item on the submission form: a question at the start about what kind of matter is being submitted, an automatic transfer to the right channel, and a message telling the person that the matter has been transferred and to where. The problem is not that employees fail to see the difference. It is that only one channel is open in front of them.

Rewards in a suggestion system

A suggestion system can tie an accepted suggestion to a reward, and the basis of that reward is something to write down before the first case arises: what it is paid for, how much or by what rule, and who decides. A fixed sum for each implemented suggestion is one workable approach. A share of a measured saving is another, but the second needs a measurement agreed before implementation, not after it; otherwise a dispute over the size of the saving becomes the only way out of every successful case. The instrument for paying a reward quickly is a spot award. A reward for an accepted suggestion pays for a particular idea, which sets it apart from milestone awards, paid for a period of service already completed.

Whether such a reward is paid, and how it is described, rests on the organisation’s approved work regulation and on the provision that governs it; the definition of suggestion system does not settle either point.

Two further points are easy to overlook and are written down alongside the reward rule: what happens when more than one employee submits the same idea within a short time of each other, and what happens when the suggestion falls within the core of its author’s own job. Leaving both unanswered turns the first successful case into a dispute. Behind them sits a wider question. In the sources we reviewed we found nothing that settles who owns an idea an employee submits through a suggestion system, or what rights submitting it creates, so we draw no conclusion on the point. It is a matter for what the organisation writes in its policy, and the point has its own sources.

Why rejection is the real work of a suggestion system

In the arithmetic above, three of every four suggestions received are not implemented, so in that example the channel’s work consists more of replying no than of replying yes. The wording of that reply is the clause that can be neglected, even though it decides whether people keep writing or stop.

A useful reply says one thing beyond the refusal: why. Four reasons for declining a suggestion can be distinguished, and each leads its author somewhere different:

• Already implemented, without anyone being told. This exposes a gap in internal communication rather than in the idea, and the reply tells the author where to find what was done.
• Tried and stopped for a reason. The reason is given; otherwise the same suggestion can return from someone else months later.
• Outside what the organisation can change, such as a matter decided elsewhere or tied to an existing obligation. No improvement to the idea will fix this kind of refusal.
• Postponed for priority or for cost. This is the only one of the four in which “it may be reconsidered” is said, and it is given a date rather than left open.

An organisation that answers with each of the four as it applies keeps the channel alive even in a quarter in which it implements nothing. One that sends the same sentence to everyone closes the channel even while implementing three ideas.

What a suggestion system is not

• A quality circle. That is a standing group from a single workplace that meets regularly, analyses the problems of its members’ work and follows up the effect of what has been implemented. A suggestion system is an individual channel with no meeting, no shared analysis and no later follow through by the person who made the suggestion. The difference is practical: the channel can take three hundred participants with one idea each, while a circle may take six and keep working on a problem over time.
• A pulse survey. In a pulse survey the organisation asks employees a question it has chosen, and the output is an aggregate measurement. The employee Net Promoter Score is one measure that a pulse survey can carry. A suggestion system starts with the employee, on a subject the employee chooses, and its output is a case that receives a reply by name.
• Continuous feedback. This concerns how people perform and runs between an employee and their manager. A suggestion system concerns how the work is done, and by design it bypasses the reporting line.
• A box in the corridor. It is a means of receiving ideas, not a system. What separates the two is the five written commitments listed above, and the most important of them is the period within which a reply is given.

When a suggestion system does not work

• An organisation with no budget for implementation. The channel produces ideas that can need money or time. If none of them has a way forward, every reply becomes a repeated apology, and repeated apologies can close a channel quickly.
• A channel that passes through the line manager. A suggestion can concern a method that the same manager put in place, so making the manager a stage on the route can block a whole class of ideas before anyone reads them.
• An anonymous channel with no alternative. Accepting anonymous suggestions can raise participation, but it rules out replying and asking questions, which loses half the value of an idea. The safer course is to offer both options and to tell people what each one involves.
• A launch campaign with no fixed review capacity. This is the case worked through in the arithmetic above, and the numbers show how it ends before it begins.

The provision relied on is that of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 72 (notification of a penalty decision, the grievance to the competent body at the employer and the objection before the labor courts). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, amended Article 72 of the Labor Law, and the period stated above is taken from the consolidated text published after that amendment.

Before a suggestion system is announced

One step before launch is to reverse the order: fix the capacity first, then announce. Whoever will review the suggestions says how many they can settle in a month, and the size and scope of the launch follow from that: one department first, or one subject, or a limited window. A narrow channel that replies within two weeks builds the trust it needs to widen later. A wide channel that replies after a year closes itself, and it closes with it whatever is opened afterwards under any name.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Corporate Whistleblowing
• Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
• Milestone Awards
• Informal Communication
• Formalization