The people doing a job know where it wastes time. WITS is where they say so — and where the answer comes back. Screened, scored, decided, and returned to the person who raised it whether it is a yes or a no.
Hooks arrive loose in a bulk box, so every order means counting by hand at the counter.
Proposed solutionAsk the warehouse to pre-pack hooks into polybags of 12 during the quiet morning shift.
Expected benefitAround five minutes per curtain sale — over an hour of counter time back on a Saturday.
A proposal is three separate questions at submission — what is wrong, what would you do, what would it save — never one free-text box. Everything after that is about getting it to a decision quickly and telling the submitter what happened.
Staff describe an improvement to their own work. Their name, outlet and position come from the staff record, not from a form.
A coordinator accepts, asks a question, links a duplicate, reroutes it, or declines it. Every outcome carries a reason.
Accepting puts it in a pool, named to nobody. A Council member claims it and marks it against the published rubric — the total is computed from the marks and the weights, with no field to type it into.
Implement, keep in view, or decline — each with a rationale. An approval needs a named owner and a date before it can be saved.
Tracked to a named owner and a target date, closed only when the change is genuinely in use — and verified by somebody else.
With a single member appointed, there is no second opinion to wait for and nothing a sitting would add. That member's marks and their decision are the Council's, recorded in one move. Most good ideas are small, and making them wait for a committee is how a scheme like this dies.
Every member marks their own evaluation and recommends an outcome with a written reason. A recommendation moves nothing on its own — the outcome is recorded once, on the sittings board, and is attributed to the Council rather than to a member.
Suggestion schemes rarely fail because the form was wrong. They fail because somebody sent an idea in and never heard back. Each of these exists to stop a specific way that happens.
Every stage change notifies the submitter, and it is not a per-proposal setting anyone can turn off. A decline arrives with the reason attached; a bare status change is not an answer.
Name, employee number, outlet, position and reporting line all come from the HR-maintained staff record. There is no field a submitter can get wrong about themselves, and no anonymous submission.
Claimed at submission, validated once the change is actually running, actual at closure — all three kept, and the gap between them reported. Nothing converts the claim into a score: the benefit mark is made by a person, with the claim shown beside it. An inflated estimate costs nothing to write, so it has to persuade somebody rather than a lookup table.
Elapsed against allowed sits on every row with the deadline marked, and the clock stops while a question is with the submitter. Everything past its target is listed in one report — by stage, by age and by the person holding it — so nobody has to remember which queue to look in.
A proposal can be voided with a reason, never removed. The audit log is append-only, and a rerouted or duplicate idea stays reportable — it is still evidence that staff are engaging.
A duplicate is linked to the original and counted as supporting interest on it. Three people raising the same problem is stronger evidence than one, and the submitter is told which proposal theirs joined.
What a role does is a set of permissions an administrator edits on a form, so the left column is where a fresh install starts rather than a fixed truth. What a role cannot do is the part that holds: three of these are written into the code and one into the database itself, where no permission reaches them. Holding a role says you may act; the staff record decides which outlets you act on.
| Role | Does, by default | Cannot |
|---|---|---|
| Staff submitter | Proposes improvements, answers questions, follows their own outcomes | See anyone else's submission, or any score |
| WITS coordinator | Screens, categorises, reroutes, links duplicates, verifies closures, runs every report | Score anything — and never be the sole evaluator of something they screened in code |
| Evaluator dormant | Held a department's own scoring authority. The Council scores everything now, so the role grants nothing | Open anything — it is kept, unassigned, rather than deleted |
| Council member | Claims anything in the pool, marks it against the rubric, records the validated position on cost, scope and capital spend | Alter a computed total, or score a proposal they screened in code |
| Council convenor | Everything a member does. Sittings, quorum and agendas are built and switched off | Hold an authority a member does not — the seat is the authority |
| Outlet manager | Receives the weekly digest, prints the outlet notice, follows their own outlet's outcomes | Screen, score, or see another outlet |
| Implementation owner | Delivers it, posts progress, marks it blocked, attaches evidence, records the actual band | Move the target date, or verify their own closure in the database |
| Project lead | Runs promoted work as a team project with milestones | Close it without a completion assessment |
| Administrator | Assigns roles, edits what every other role may do, holds all configuration | Maintain staff or outlet data — and cannot lift the three rules above |
A scheme that accepts everything answers nothing well. Three kinds of thing get turned away at screening — and two of them are told exactly where to go instead, because the point is that nothing is lost, not that everything belongs here.
Equipment faults and defects go to the Fault & Defect Reporting System, with the reference recorded here so the submitter can follow it there.
Customer complaints go to the Customer Service System. Closed here, retained for reporting, and the submitter is told where it went.
HR grievances and complaints about individuals have no destination in WITS and are not handled here at all. They belong with HR.
Sign in with your SSF ID — your outlet, position and reporting line come with you. Every page in WITS sits behind that sign-in; nothing here is public but this one.