Case Study: State of Michigan achieves large-scale employee engagement and innovation with IdeaScale

State of Michigan - Customer Case Study

The State of Michigan launched a reinvention effort to make state government more transparent and participatory, but an internal study revealed engagement gaps between frontline staff and leadership. To address this, Michigan sought a platform where employees at every level could share ideas and collaborate on topics like employee engagement, customer service, and cost savings.

Michigan deployed the Bureaucracy Busters program on the IdeaScale crowdsourcing platform, using promotion, idea collection, committee review, and recognition to surface and implement ideas. The program generated nearly 2,000 ideas, 8,500+ comments and 134,000 votes from about 10,000 users (roughly 20% initial adoption), and produced concrete outcomes: a plan to cut login steps and improve efficiency by at least 50%, a hiring-notification system that could affect 450,000 applicants annually, improved tourism marketing tactics, and numerous employee engagement initiatives such as town halls and increased leadership communication.

State of Michigan

Nikki Sunstrum

Social Engagement Coordinator