Employee suggestion schemes vs idea management (Betriebliches Vorschlagswesen)
A works council member hears "idea management tool" and asks for the bonus rules. The innovation manager hears the same words and expects a workshop tool. Both are right, and the project stalls for three months while everyone finds out they are talking about two different things. This piece separates the Betriebliches Vorschlagswesen (BVW, the employee suggestion scheme) from idea management in the innovation sense, so you can run both without one strangling the other.
Two processes, one vocabulary
The Betriebliches Vorschlagswesen is the traditional employee suggestion scheme. An employee submits a proposal, usually about safety, cost or a process on the shop floor. An assessor works out the saving or benefit, and the proposer receives a bonus (Prämie), often calculated from the first-year saving. The rules sit in a company agreement (Betriebsvereinbarung), and the works council has co-determination rights in its design: section 87 of the Works Constitution Act (BetrVG) lists the principles of the company suggestion scheme among the co-determination matters.
Idea management in the innovation sense is about questions nobody has answered yet: new products, services, business models. Ideas come out of workshops, not individual submissions. They are developed into concepts, scored against criteria rather than savings, and the process ends with a decision, not a bonus.
In German companies both share one word, Idee, and that is where the trouble starts.
The comparison
| Employee suggestion scheme | Idea management (innovation) | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Improve what exists: safety, cost, process | Answer open questions: new products, services, business models |
| Who proposes | An individual employee, on their own initiative | A team, in a workshop or a sprint |
| Unit | One suggestion | A concept with several authors |
| How it is evaluated | Saving or benefit, worked out by an assessor | Criteria such as fit, impact and feasibility, scored by the team |
| What the proposer gets | A bonus, often from the first-year saving | Credit as co-author and a decision |
| Who decides | The BVW officer or committee, under the agreement | A sponsor or decision board |
| Typical time to decision | After the assessment, often months, with deadlines set by the agreement | Set by the process, ideally a fixed date after the workshop |
| Governed by | Company agreement, section 87 BetrVG | A process description, agreed with the works council |
Where they overlap
Both need a record. A suggestion without a file number is lost, and a workshop idea without a page is lost just as fast. Both need a written reason for every no, because a proposer who hears "not now" without a reason stops proposing. And both need respect for the person who had the idea, whether that is a machine operator with a safety fix or a product team with a concept.
Those three things are the same in both worlds. Everything else differs.
Where mixing them hurts
- Bonus logic applied to concepts. A workshop concept has four or five authors. If a bonus is attached, everyone starts asking whose idea it was, and the next session is quieter. Collaboration dies when authorship pays.
- Innovation scoring applied to shop-floor suggestions. Someone proposes a guard on a machine, and the proposal waits for a scoring round on strategic fit. It feels unfair, it is slow, and it burns the goodwill the BVW lives on.
- One tool for both. A tool built for individual submissions and bonus calculation handles workshops badly. A workshop tool has no bonus logic and no agreement workflow. One tool for both usually serves neither; start with what idea management software needs to do.
Do not promise bonuses for workshop ideas to "motivate" the team. It turns a team session into a competition and can pull the innovation process under the co-determination rules of the suggestion scheme. Check with your works council and legal team before any bonus rule touches the innovation process.
How to run both
- Name them differently inside the company. One is the Vorschlagswesen, the other is the innovation process, the idea lab, or whatever your people will actually say. If the names overlap, the expectations overlap.
- Keep the BVW agreement as it is. It works, it is negotiated, and it has nothing to do with your workshops. Do not reopen it to write innovation into it.
- Write a one-page description of the innovation process for the works council. Say what it is and, above all, what it is not: no bonus, no individual assessment, workshop results with attribution only by consent. Check with your works council and legal team whether the tool needs a company agreement; works council and innovation tools covers the usual questions.
- Define the handover. A shop-floor suggestion that turns out to be a product idea moves over to the innovation process with the proposer's name and credit. Write down who decides on the move and how the proposer is told.
- Keep two records with one search. Two processes, two records, but anyone should be able to search both from one place. The question "has anyone proposed this before" needs one answer, not two. That shared search is the start of an innovation memory.
Invite the BVW officer to your first innovation workshop. They know every idea that was ever submitted and why it died. That is the most valuable half hour of context you will get.
Austria and Switzerland have related traditions with their own rules. This piece describes the German case.
Never lose an idea between sessions
IdeaHone follows every idea from first mention to decision, across all your workshops and teams.
What is the difference between Vorschlagswesen and Ideenmanagement?
The Vorschlagswesen collects individual suggestions to improve what exists, assesses the saving and pays a bonus under a company agreement. Ideenmanagement in the innovation sense develops concepts for open questions in workshops, scores them against criteria and ends with a decision.
Do we need a company agreement for an innovation workshop tool?
Not because of the suggestion scheme, as long as the tool has no bonus and no individual assessment. Co-determination can still apply for other reasons, for example if the tool could record behaviour or performance. Check with your works council and legal team before you roll it out.
Can one tool handle both?
Rarely well. Bonus calculation and assessor workflows do not fit workshops, and a workshop tool has no agreement logic. Use two tools and make sure one search reaches both records.
