Case Study: Marks & Spencer boosts employee ideas and engagement with Sideways 6 and Microsoft Teams

Marks & Spencer boosts employee ideas by 70% with Sideways 6

Marks & Spencer, a major UK retailer, sought to better harness ideas from its 70,000 employees through its 'Suggest to Steve' program. The challenge was engaging every single employee and moving the initiative away from a cumbersome email-based system. The vendor Sideways 6 provided a solution using its "Ideas by Sideways 6" app integrated with Microsoft Teams.

The Sideways 6 solution made idea-sharing more accessible and collaborative via Teams, while its backend platform streamlined the assessment process with structured submissions and automated workflows. This resulted in a 70% year-on-year increase in idea volume, with over 3,000 monthly interactions. The program successfully implemented hundreds of ideas, including one that raised over £150,000 for charity and another saving 600 pieces of paper weekly.

Marks & Spencer