The New Year is a great time to research the relevant business and industry awards you’d like to put your organisation forward for during 2016, so we’ve put together a timely reminder as to why it’s really worth the time and effort involved.

At Pure, we are a keen advocates of business awards as they celebrate and promote the fantastic employers and places to work in our region. That’s why we sponsor several different business awards each year including the Best Employer category at the Cambridge Business Excellence Awards and Eastern Daily Press Business Awards, as well as running our own Best Employers Eastern Region awards.

Everyone loves winning an award, but there’s actually significant business benefits from just going through the application process itself, let alone potentially being crowned the winner!

Gain a fresh perspective

Going through the award application process also doubles up as an extremely useful business management exercise. The judging criteria for business awards can be seen as a benchmark of what leading experts in the field believe businesses should be achieving to be celebrated as outstanding examples of success. Taking the time to sit down and really think through the criteria, finding relevant examples for your own application, will not only help you identify what your business has already achieved but also any areas for further improvement.

Carry out competitor analysis

Being involved in key industry and regional business awards can be a great way to continually monitor and update your competitor analysis. Seeing which organisations have entered awards, and how your business has fared against them, is an opportunity to benchmark your business against its competitors. Case studies of winning and shortlisted businesses are also often published during awards, providing easy access to information about what your competitors are up to.   

Raise your business profile

Winning or being shortlisted for a business award is an excellent endorsement for your business and helps to distinguish you from your competitors. Promoting an award win will help to strengthen your reputation as a credible business and will raise your profile amongst the businesses’ key stakeholders. Plus the award events themselves are a great opportunity to network and build relationships with other business leaders and to meet potential new customers.  

Increase employee engagement

Business awards recognise the hard work of everyone involved in an organisation and winning an accolade is great way to boost employee motivation and staff morale. Make sure that you celebrate the award with all the staff involved, especially if you can’t invite everyone to the award ceremony itself, to enable all employees to share and enjoy the success.

Attract future talent

Winning an accolade really helps to raise your employee brand. This will inevitably help you to attract future talent to your organisation as it will be seen as an attractive place to work, with great career prospects.