ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

IDEASCALE

Environmental Resources Management Connecting a Global Community

Environmental  Resources  Management  (ERM)  is  a  leading  global  provider  of  environmental,  health,  safety,  risk,  social  consul=ng  services  and  sustainability-­‐related  services.  They have more than 160 offices in over 40 countries and territories employing more than 5,000 people. Those employees work on projects around the world to help their clients understand and manage the sustainability challenges that the world is increasingly facing.

In order to help meet their mission and grow their business,  ERM  decided  to  launch  an  idea  tournament  on  IdeaScale  technology  that  collected  ideas  from  their  5,000  employees  around  the  world.  Employees were initially invited to participate in the tournament in an email from their CEO as well as follow-up communications on the company intranet and various senior leadership reminders. They  also  invited  employees  to  par=cipate  in  an  internal  social  media  campaign  called  “Where  in  the  World  is  the  ERM  Innova=on  Tournament?,”  in which people could submit pictures of themselves with the Tournament logo sticker they’d received. These pictures were posted to their IdeaScale community.

ERM directed its employees to share market-facing ideas about how to improve their company, but also ended up receiving suggestions about how to improve internal processes, as well. Ideas were gathered in three rounds and each round included a judging phase:

• In  Round  One,  ERM  looked  for  ideas  that  would  transform  ERM's  compe==ve  edge  in  the  global  marketplace  by  leveraging  exis=ng  technology. Those ideas were evaluated by judges who shortlisted their top 25 entries.

• In Round Two,  the  authors  of  the  top  25  entries  received  mentoring  sessions  and  provided  addi=onal  informa=on  for  evalua=on  and  feedback  on  their  ideas.  The full workforce of employees were then invited to vote on those entries and five ideas were shortlisted.

• In Round 3, idea authors received coaching for a “proof of concept” prototype and conducted an idea dry run.  The  shortlisted  idea  authors  delivered  presenta=ons  of  their  solu=ons  and  one  winner  was  selected  and  their  idea  was  implemented.  

The  remaining  ideas  will  be  addressed  by  a  global  commiNee  of  employees  who  will  harvest  the  tangible  concepts  for  implementa=on  at  a  later  date.    

2IdeaScale Case Studies

3IdeaScale Case Studies

The results were remarkable:

•   More  than  3,000  employees  par=cipated  in  the  program  (a  69%  adop=on  rate)  and  developed  465  new  ideas.    

• ERM also noted that they learned of many new concepts that would improve  their  business,  both  for  their  clients,  as  well  as  their  employees.      

• The team also remarked on the high  quality  of  submissions that were received from team members all over the world.

“Not only did we gather numerous innovative ideas, we connected our global workforce in a way that we’d never done before,” said Erin Malvezzi, Senior Marketing Coordinator at ERM, “launching  an  employee  engagement  program  for  a  workforce  as  diverse  as  ours  was  extraordinarily  powerful  and  rewarding.”Although it was ERM’s first ideation tournament, they predict that it won’t be their last.

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