In 2011 we’ve made sharing your ideas even easier. Bright Ideas launched in February and since then we’ve been completely overwhelmed by your fantastic suggestions.

We’re more enthusiastic than ever to hear your big ideas and to keep everyone focused each month we’re going to be asking for your ideas on a specific area to help Asda improve.

You’ll have heard from Karen Todd and Craig Bonner on ‘Talking Shop’ that we’re currently looking for your Bright Ideas reduce our carrier bag usage and save energy.

The best ideas put forward and selected will be implemented across the chain and the colleague will receive a £30 Gift Card.

We’ve already had some great ideas from our colleagues on how we can reduce our carrier bag usage – like the idea we received from Linda Campbell at Carlisle store. Linda suggested that spare, small bags that are often pulled off accidently in the produce department should be saved and used for smaller items on the checkouts.

So get your thinking caps on and submit your idea here.

Great news – in 2011, sharing your ideas will be even easier. We are combining the Tell Andy and Asda Entrepreneur suggestion schemes into one new scheme called Bright Ideas. Your Bright Ideas can be submitted at any time via the WIRE or right here on the Green Room.

Colleagues can submit ideas, big or small all year round. Any ideas that are implemented will win you a £30 gift card that you can spend in store. A selection of colleagues with big ideas will be invited to present their idea to the panel at Asda House every quarter. These colleagues will also get to attend the Big Brunch and a celebration lunch with Andy Clarke. We’ll also select one idea of the quarter, which will win £1,000.

The Asda Entrepreneur of the year – who wins a whopping £2,000 prize – will be announced at a special award ceremony in February 2012. The winner could be the colleague with the idea that has made the biggest difference to the business throughout the year or a colleague who has submitted a fantastic selection of smaller ideas.

Could you be the Asda Entrepreneur of the year? Submit your idea here.

All colleagues who submit ideas before 30th May 2011 will – if selected – be eligible to present to the panel at Asda House on 1st July 2011.

Meanwhile, we’ve been enjoying the final month of our existing Tell Andy scheme with some great colleague ideas. Here’s a selection of some of our favourites. See if these spark any Bright Ideas!

When customers search on Store Locator for a store, they enter a postcode which then returns a list of stores near to that postcode. It would be great if it also flagged whether this is a postcode that is delivered to by Home Shopping. – Nathan Dring, Asda House

Hi Nathan, this is a great suggestion, and has been passed to the web team for implementation.

I suggest the plastic bag that the rotis chicken comes in should have a click seal across where the chicken is and a handle at the top to make it easier to carry and handle at the checkout. – Margaret Millington, Birchwood

Thanks for your feedback, Margaret. We think it’s a fantastic idea and hope to land a very similar bag in stores around September time.

To produce cards containing information on how to store or freeze fresh meat after leaving the store. These could be placed on the end of the meat aisles for customers to pick up when selecting their product. – Karen Cook, Arrowe Park

This is a great idea that could benefit many customers, Karen, and we are currently looking into how we could introduce these to our stores.

The number of each title in the drawers behind the music and video desk should be restricted to 3, not 4, to allow for more variation in the drawers. – James Booth, Shaw

Hi James, this is a very interesting suggestion, and is being investigated and considered by the operations colleagues who work in the MVG team.

Despite the Christmas rush, we’ve had some fantastic ideas on how to improve our business from colleagues all over the country in December. We’ve put together a selection of some of the best – see if they inspire any ideas in you!

Read more

Last month, we asked you for your suggestions on how to improve health and wellbeing amongst colleagues. We’ve had a fantastic response, and are happy to announce that Jillian Bent from our Radcliffe store is November’s Tell Andy suggestion of the month winner.

Read more

The Tell Andy scheme continues to be a great source of ideas from every part of Asda, and this month, we’ve received some great suggestions about how to improve what we do on a day-to-day basis. Here are just a few that we’ve had recently – see if they spark an idea from you and if they do submit it here.

We need to reduce the amount of prints that come off the genicom every day – a lot of them are never looked at. (John Voller, Brighton Marina)

We are already doing this, look out for a reduction of prints in store later this year!

Can we introduce a pay monthly scheme for expensive items such as TVs? (Trevor Hicks, Llanelli)

Our Financial Services team are currently working with potential partners to provide this service in 2011.

Could colleagues who are unable to act as queue busters on checkouts come across and relieve till trained colleagues by acting as finger pointers or bag packers or even runners? (Heather Archer, Burgh Heath)

We have already briefed this out to all Service Managers.

Change our freezer from store pick to pick by line! (Toni Hathway, CDC Bristol)

We are currently undertaking a review of how the frozen distribution model needs to look in order to support the business over the next 10 years.

Rollback POS should be a different colour! (Stephanie McGowan, Accrington)

Unfortunately, we cant use this idea as customers have told us that the best value messages come across in red and yellow.

All Wal-Mart colleagues should carry the same international discount card. (Christine Hawkins, St. Austell)

We are going to pass this on to Wal-Mart as feedback to improve their colleague discount card scheme.

Thanks everyone for their great suggestions – keep them coming! This month’s theme for Tell Andy is Children In Need. Please give us your suggestions on what Asda can do to raise as much money as possible. This may be something that your store has already done, if it is then please upload a picture too!

A selection of the best ideas and suggestions will be published on the Green Room for other stores and depots to see and one winner will win a £50 Asda gift card. You can also submit your suggestions on Tell Andy which is on Andy Online on Wire.