It’s one of those press releaes from CLO, but it’s a interesting, completely solvable problem – why don’t organisations ask their staff advice?
Here’s some facts from the release:

The less education an employee has, the less likely he or she will be asked to contribute an idea. Forty percent of those with just high school or less reported seldom or never being asked for advice compared with 20.9 percent of college graduates.

Likewise, 45.7 percent of employees earning less than $25,000 annually reported never or seldom being consulted compared with 24.7 percent of those earning more than $75,000.

There were no significant differences among age groups.

“How foolish to think just more educated or higher-ranking employees are worthy of being consulted?” he said. “It’s less-educated workers that are actually making the stuff or are on the front line, dealing with customers — they’re the ones I’d want to talk to first.”

Absolutely – these front-line guys are the face of your organisation…I’ve never understood this attitude of top-down directives – it’s so fundamentally counterintuitive.

And the costs and complexity of enabling employee feedback and involvement are falling away – there’s just no excuse.