Since Catherine’s post (‘Award winning customer service’) we have been evaluating awards in general.  We posted a question about this in a couple of our groups on LinkedIn and had some interesting feedback – ranging from negative comments such as ‘awards are just media hype’ and ‘publicity stunts’ to positive reasons to enter such as ‘they demonstrate the quality of an organsation’, ‘improve team morale’, ‘raise profile’ and ‘celebrate success’.

Personally I am becoming slightly sceptical of some industry awards as we enter a number of these seeking external recognition for our business, people, products, software development and innovation, yet whilst having been recognised we have rarely won.  This could well be for a whole host of reasons but the fact is we just don’t know.  Feedback or advice on how to improve is rarely given – why is this?

The cynic in me thinks it could be part of the money making machine called vanity and it is the taking part (and paying the hefty entrance or gala dinner fees) that counts – not about industry best practice.

That is why when eg launched its own awards for clients to recognise and celebrate team commitment and reward the hard work and success of Team Leaders, Managers and their teams, the purpose was to raise the bar of performance and recognise outstanding achievements.

I am sure we all know why we need recognition from time to time and the benefits it brings.  The two basic types of recognition are external and internal.

External: tangible, outward forms of recognition – certificates, trophies, awards, etc.
Internal: less tangible; includes pride of accomplishment, self-satisfaction, and member’s personal belief that he or she accomplished, contributed, and did better today than
last week.

The eg operational excellence® awards are now in their 5th year and yes like other industry awards not everybody wins as that would be counter productive.  However, the reasons why clients enter these awards year after year is that:

All entrants are recognised and the demonstration of exceptional achievement and best practice are then awarded.  Feedback is given to every entrant at both a company and organisational level.

This way you know what you have to do to improve, where you fell down and actions that you can take back to the workplace to make it happen and improve.

So lets not have awards for awards sake – let’s hold them and reward for the right reasons or else they won’t mean a thing.

What awards in your industry do you rate and which don’t you rate?  Share your reasons why so we can get some debate on what works and what achieves the objectives of industry awards.