Anthem learned three key lessons from implementing their employee idea program SoapBox: 1) Choosing the right people to administer the program and promptly implement ideas is crucial to success, even if it takes more time; 2) Plans will likely need to evolve, so maintaining flexibility is important; 3) Actively listening to employee ideas, including less popular ones, can provide valuable insights about problems to address.

1. a case study
Anthem:
Three Lessons Learned from
a Successful SoapBox
DURING THE SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH and sustained use
of its SoapBox, Anthem learned some key takeaways that
you can leverage in implementing your own employee
idea program. This case study explores three lessons: the
importance of choosing the right employee idea program
administrators, the need to let plans evolve and how to
really listen to employee ideas.

2. About Anthem
F
rom cuts and falls to major emergencies,
Americans rely on Anthem to get them
treated and get them well again. Anthem
is the leading Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer in
the United States and is transforming healthcare
along the way. Anthem has adopted SoapBox,
with a target community size of 10,000. In the six
months since its 2015 launch Anthem has seen
great employee uptake, with thousands signing on
and contributing ideas.
Why SoapBox?
Anthem knew it had a lot of employee ideas, but
recognized it could do a better job of listening to them.
The message came through multiple channels that
employees wanted to share their suggestions and
also expressed a desire to improve their workplace
processes. Underpinning this push for an employee idea
platform was support from the leadership team to
improve the employee experience and the fact that
one of Anthem’s core values is innovation. What made
SoapBox stand out for Anthem was its easy-to-use design
and scalability.
Lesson 1: Pick the right people, even if it
takes time
For an employee idea program to succeed, you need the
right people to run it and make it work. A key player here is
the person responsible for promptly evaluating and then
implementing the top ideas on an organization’s SoapBox.
Why is this role so crucial? It solves one of the biggest
problems with the traditional stuck-on-the-wall suggestion
“SoapBox has an intuitive, easy
to use, well-presented interface
with reporting capabilities,
which we like!”
Christine Tang Wilson, Staff Vice President for
Strategic Initiatives
Key Stats Six Months In
BIGGETS WINS
Growing community from a few
hundred to a few thousand in six
months, 41% adoption rate and 18
completed ideas.
SOAPBOX provides easy to use
software and services empowering
organizations to generate real
business value from employee ideas.
Visit SoapBoxHQ.com to learn about
how SoapBox works, get more case
studies on organizations tapping
employee ideas and to book a custom
demonstration today.
1,476
IDEAS
2,456
USERS
18
COMPLETED IDEAS
41%
ADOPTION RATE (BEATING
THE TARGET OF 30%)

3. implemented ideas that provide the ultimate value, it’s the
initial commitment to building up the idea program (like
strengthening an organization’s problem solving muscle)
that gets employees’ suggestions flowing and makes
future business results possible.
Lesson 3: Actively listen to ideas to see
what you’re missing
SoapBox makes spotting top ideas easy — the ones that
gather the most support from the employee community
will be flagged for program administrators to act on.
But as Anthem learned there’s also value in regularly
monitoring a range of ideas and the community
discussion to catch key themes that emerge. Though
there will be a lot of ideas generated by creative
employees, this shouldn’t be imposing. As Anthem learned
by sifting through its SoapBox ideas, there can be general
themes that emerge that are really valuable information
to act upon.
By reading what the idea community had to say, Anthem
noticed a recurring pattern that didn’t individually get
flagged for review: multiple employees were voicing
frustration with some of Anthem’s enterprise software.
With this intel acquired, Anthem responded by improving
training on the software, solving the problem and showing
how valuable insight can come from actively looking
through employee ideas.
Conclusion
Anthem’s SoapBox success has come from learning and
adapting to lessons it learned along the way towards
launching and running its employee idea platform. This
feedback has been fed into the idea program itself to
keep it running smoothly and to ensure valuable ideas
from engaged employees keep coming in.
box: the ideas that go in are never heard about again. This
results in not only wasted ideas, but frustrated employees
who sour on submitting a suggestion again.
This is why the role of Idea Partner is so important —
they’re the ones who make the crucial decision of
whether an idea is feasible, and then work to implement
it in a timely manner. And because this position is so
important, you’ll want to make sure the job falls to just the
right people.
This takes us to one of the key things Anthem learned
with its SoapBox: Take the time to find the best fit for Idea
Partner. Sometimes picking a too-senior or too-junior
person means they may not not take responsibility for
implementing ideas, or lack the proper authority to do so.
Another good tip here? When launching SoapBox, look to
departments that have shown a keenness for fresh ideas
and trying new things. These departments can become
employee idea program champions and provide quick
wins from implemented ideas that can then be showcased
to the rest of the organization. These internal success
stories stories make convincing employees in other
departments to submit their ideas much easier. And
to make sure Idea Partners are well-versed in the idea
system, train them close to launch, so they can quickly put
their knowledge to use as the ideas start flooding in.
Lesson 2: Be prepared for plans to evolve
Or to put it another way, be flexible. Anthem had set
its target launch date for its SoapBox to align with its
upcoming annual employee survey. Yet as the launch
process moved forward, it became clear the timeline
was going to be something of a crunch. Rolling out an
employee idea program like SoapBox can’t be done
overnight. There are a lot of parts to assemble, like setting
up employee communications, and making sure key
program administrator roles like the Idea Partners are
trained and in place.
So what did Anthem do? Let its launch plans evolve. This
flexibility meant Anthem didn’t pushed back its launch.
This gave it breathing room to get everything aligned and
make sure its launch plans and strategy were optimal.
As a result, its SoapBox got up and running on a much
stronger footing, improving its uptake with employees.
Another way to think about this is that although it’s the
“We’re learning and we’re
improving as each week goes by”
Elizabeth Wall, Program Manager