We're on a roll here at Vetter, with two new features being added this month (March 2016). Below you can find a brief outline of the features. To get any of these new 'Power Features' switched on or find out more about how they might meet your specific needs, contact us.     

Connector – enable employees without email addresses to participate

This feature enables companies who have staff that do not have their own email address to log in and participate in Vetter. This is great for manufacturing and/or non-office based businesses. We've already had some great success with this, with some of our UK customers.

Idea moderation - approve ideas before the go public

Would you like a little more control over what gets submitted to Vetter? Then try out our Idea Moderation feature. If this is switched on, then all ideas will be sent to the Admins of the account for approval, before they are posted live. Approving or Rejecting an idea is as simple as clicking a link (see screenshot).

Today we proudly announce a neat new feature - Idea Owners.

This feature enables Admins to assign any user as an ‘Idea Owner’ of a particular Vetted Idea. This ‘Idea Owner’ can then provide feedback on the idea (if/when it will be implemented etc.) via the Vetted Ideas/Idea Status pages.    

If there’s one thing every business manager knows, it’s that an engaged, proactive employee is a happy employee. Being proactive in the workplace requires a high level of enthusiasm and engagement, and that kind of attitude always affects productivity in a positive way. It also brings on feelings of satisfaction in the employee, and that in turn leads to success and stability in the office. 

Sounds like a win-win proposition, doesn’t it? How can a company help to inspire employees to greater involvement and productivity though? Let’s take a look at a few employee involvement techniques that may greatly inspire employees to become more involved and engaged at the workplace, and thus become happier and more productive workers.

Since its first major implementation in the mid-1980s, Six Sigma has become synonymous with quality improvement.  Its roots, however, stretch back more than one hundred years to the early and mid-nineteenth century when Carl Friedrich Gauss showed how probability could be represented by a bell-shaped or “normal” curve that peaks around the mean or expected value and quickly falls off towards infinity. 

In the 1920s, the concept that would become Six Sigma took another step forward when Walter Shewhart showed that three sigma from the mean is the point where a process requires correction.   Another sixty years would go by before engineer Bill Smith presented the concept of Six Sigma to Motorola Chairman Bob Galvin who then incorporated the metrics into the company’s processes.  Six Sigma Black Belts arrived, things got ‘lean’ and we then arrive at to our first definition of Six Sigma provided by its developers and summed up nicely by Wikipedia....

Numerous studies have proven that happy staff are more productive and perform better in the workplace than staff who are not happy with their jobs. Salary increases may not always be an option, but there are other ways to boost the morale in the office. Many staff would benefit from some fun office activities to boost morale.

Over the past 2 years, we've been working hard to add features and improve the overall usability of Vetter. We've made it mobile friendly, enabled Users to upload images, strengthened the Analytics/Design features. This investment (and the further investment we have planned) of course, costs money and in the meantime our infrastructure costs have risen. So....

If there’s one good thing about the digital age, it’s that the internet brings everything to you. Gone are the days of attending conference after conference to learn better management procedures. Now, you can read about it in the comfort of your own home or office. To help you get started in your education, we’ve listed (in no particular order) ten articles on leadership from the greats that came before you.

Suggestion boxes are a great way to open lines of communication with your staff. Not only will they allow employees the chance to share their ideas and report any workplace failures, but they'll also provide management, with on-the-ground feedback about everyday business operations. But what if you aren't sure what the policy should look like? What rules and regulations should you put into place to make sure everyone uses the box to its fullest potential? Here are just a few suggestions for creating your employee suggestion box policy. 

Imagine that you’re seated at a table with several other people, all dressed in their very best. Suits and ties are just the beginning as bow ties, top hats, dresses and high heels are among the fashions, too. It’s a very upscale place. However, you’re not at a fancy restaurant or a gala event. You’re at work, having lunch in the cafeteria. Welcome to Formal Fridays. Remember when everyday business attire was serious and formal? Almost like an official uniform for men, suits and ties were expected, and women wore the requisite dresses or suits. We’re not talking about ancient times here; this was the 90s, when being dressed up was simply part of daily life.

If you look at the numbers, every ten to twenty years (we’ll split the difference and call it fifteen), a major corporation decides to “restructure” its operation which, in laymen’s terms, means terminating the services of a ginormous number of workers. Rumors abound lately that IBM is set to fire over 100,000 employees (that’s dismiss, discharge, lay off, let go, give notice to, get rid of, ax, or sack depending on where you are at the moment) in what could turn out to be the largest layoff in history. While IBM may be the first to tread into the six-figure domain, the business world is certainly no stranger to mass layoffs in the five-figure range. Let’s take a look at the top sixteen mass layoffs.