The awards celebrate women excelling in their sector and will be split across four regions – Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, North England and South England – with four categories in each region: Science and MedTech; FinTech, Data Science and Cybersecurity; CleanTech, Climate and Net Zero; and Disruptive Innovation. Entries open on the 28th October.

In just six years, the awards have quickly developed a reputation for providing a springboard to growth for finalists and winners by opening doors to new connections and opportunities through the global AccelerateHER and Barclays Eagle Labs networks. Previous AccelerateHER Award winners have accessed incredible top-level market building missions to California, New York, Boston, Berlin and Dubai – resulting in new investment leads, extensive new business and a much extended network including top industry leaders.

Last year’s winner of the CleanTech, Climate and Net Zero category, Aslihan Penley from Zoex Power, had her business growth plan boosted by her success in last year’s awards. She said: “AccelerateHER Awards gave me the prestige and credibility that my clean tech start-up was missing. Alongside it, the connections, the mentoring and the whole AccelerateHER family has been fascinating!”

Announcing the partnership, Chief Operating Officer for AccelerateHER, Elizabeth Pirrie said: “Taking the awards UK-wide is testament to the success of the programme and we’re delighted to have secured the support of Barclays Eagle Labs to help us expand beyond Scotland.

“This is an exciting time for AccelerateHER as we launch the 2022 awards to find the inspirational, dynamic female founders who play a leading role driving strong global growth potential in their companies.”

Katherine Morgan, Head of High Growth and Entrepreneurs at Barclays, said: “We’re excited and honoured to be supporting the AccelerateHER awards. Celebrating and boosting the strength of female entrepreneurship in the UK is close to our hearts at Barclays and we hope that the awards will celebrate female entrepreneurs and inspire the next generation.”

The awards are sponsored by Barclays and global IT and business consulting services firm CGI. The Scottish Government has been instrumental in supporting the awards in Scotland, through its Women in Enterprise Framework and Action Plan; ensuring over 700 female founders to date have accessed tangible expert help to prepare for investment and growth .

Entries open on 28th October with the winners announced in March next year.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Inspirational Female-Led Awards Go UK-Wide With Support From Barclays Eagle Labs appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Motivated employees are the main assets of a company. However, repeated work routines can eventually bring about boredom in the employees. Eventually, the employees may lose the motivation that they previously had.

In order to keep the employees happy and motivated, acknowledging their accomplishments is very crucial. An employee awards program can be very rewarding in this regard.

However, arranging an employee awards program can be tricky. Just about anything can go wrong if it’s not planned well. Also, if your organization is a large corporation, it may face some problems while nominating employees for awards.

Today we are going to provide some insight on how to nominate an employee for an award. Stay tuned to know the entire process.

Nominating the Candidate for an Award

Nominating an employee for an award depends on the recognition program of your institution. The whole nomination process comes after that. So here are four steps to determine your nominees.

Step 1: Determining the Award Categories

This is where you determine why you are nominating your employee for an award. The award can be given to recognize the employee’s professional career expertise—for example, the employee of the month or the employee of the year category.

On the other hand, you can recognize an employee for his humor or contribution to making the workload bearable—for example, the best office prankster or the office joker.

Make sure that your awards category encourages other employees to focus on their productivity. Also, some fun employee awards will keep it entertaining. Only concentrating on work-related awards may not promote a healthy work environment.

So, determine the categories and also include some “miscellaneous award categories” to make the thing easy to customize.

Step 2: Collecting Nominations

In this step, you collect nominations for the categories you decided on in step 1. If you run a small organization, you already have an idea of the accomplishments of your employee. However, when the number of employees increases, it can be hard to keep track.

In the latter case, you can collect nominations via a form submission or email. Google Forms or Survey Monkeyallows you to create automated nomination forms. If you choose to collect nominations via email, it will need more manual work.

If you are collecting nominations via forms, you can add some silly questions as well. It will allow you to choose the award according to the employee’s taste. This slight personalization can come in very handy.

Also, make sure to collect the nominee’s name, reasons for submission, and the nominator’s name. When you perform this step, you already have few names to consider for the particular awards.

Step 3: Determining the Finalists

Upon receiving the names of the nominees, you start your evaluation process. For small companies, all the nominees can be finalists. However, for larger organizations, this part is tricky.

First, consider the names that came repeatedly. Then, find out their accomplishments. Also, consider the endorsement of their co-workers. After that, you can narrow it down to 3 to 5 names of potential winners.

Now, you will need to choose your winner. You can determine the winners in one of the four ways:

• Picked by a significant person: This is the quickest way to pick your winner. Either the CEO or any prominent management team member chooses the winner of a certain category in this process.
• Create a panel: This is more of a democratic way. You can ask a group of people from different departments to choose a winner. The planning committee can take responsibility as well. Keeping an odd number of people in the panel can work best to avoid ties.
• Apply a Rubric: Create a rubric to make the award more objective. It can easily show who deserves the award more.
• Choose randomly: If you have one too many finalists, you can narrow it down by choosing randomly. Although, it’s neither democratic nor objective.

Whichever method you choose, make sure to inform the nominators and the nominees of the process. This will make sure there isn’t any confusion.

Step 4: Announce the Finalists

Creating a buzz for the award can be productive in many ways. The easiest way to create this buzz can be declaring the finalists before the awards.

You can declare the finalists via email or the company forum. It will create anticipation and make your employees look forward to the award days.

You can also use monthly newsletters, breakroom televisions, corporate memos to announce the finalists.

Activities After Choosing the Finalists

You have chosen your finalists. Now you will need to pick the winner and deliver the award. So, how do you go about doing that?

First, pick the winner among your finalists. You can choose any method you use to pick the finalists. Selected by panel lets you be impartial, and the panel can choose the most deserving candidate. It may take a little bit of time, but the outcome is concrete. The panel can also share one or two lines before delivering the award to the winner for dramatic effect.

After picking the winner, it’s time to announce. You can use any of the previous methods you used to declare the finalists. Also, you can throw a small ceremony to acknowledge the great works done by the employee. It will give everyone a sense of participation.

All that is left is to award the winner. You don’t need to spend a ton of money on the awards. The award can be a crest or award certificate with their names engraved on it. Small gift boxes, extra vacation days, and gift certificates can also work.

After giving away the awards, you should spread the word. A statement in the company forum with the accomplishments of the award winners will do the job. You can also announce it through the breakroom TVs or give them shoutouts on your company’s social media page.

Final Words

Giving awards to the employees indicates the gratitude from the company to its hard-working employees. Making it memorable will encourage them to keep up the good work and inspire others to do the same. Being impartial while choosing the nominees can go a long way. It will also allow the company to recognize their best employees and can utilize them properly in the future.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Process of Nominating Employees for Awards appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

The 2019 Barclaycard everywoman in Retail Awards programme is now open, welcoming nominations from the industry’s exceptional talent. From the young, rising stars, to the long-standing leaders and pioneering entrepreneurs, individuals at all stages of their career journeys are invited to nominate themselves or others. By showcasing their success stories, they will inspire a new generation of female talent to pursue a rewarding career in this fast-evolving industry.

Retail is changing at an unprecedented rate making it one of the most innovative and challenging careers out there.  Stores are evolving to offer more experiential customer engagement – the physical connection to products that digital alone cannot offer. Alongside this technology is changing, not only the way we pay, but is being developed to create an enriching and curatorial customer experience.

Anita Liu Harvey, Director of Strategy at Barclaycard said: “We are excited to announce that submissions are now open for the Barclaycard everywoman in Retail Awards. These recognise the incredible contribution that women have made to the retail sector over the past year. Our depth and breadth of expertise in supporting a huge variety of retailers makes us the ideal partner for these awards. We cannot wait to see the no doubt exceptionally talented entries for 2019. As well as recognising outstanding women working in retail, we hope that these awards inspire even more women to succeed across the industry.”

With a brand-new category being introduced for 2019 – the ‘Disruptor Award’ – everywoman and Barclaycard are also searching for women making a real difference to the ever-changing face of retail, in a creative, unconventional and pioneering way.

The categories for 2019 are:

• Entrepreneur Award, sponsored by Amazon – Awarded to an owner/ founder of a retail business that has been operating for 12 months or more, whose vision will inspire other women to start their own enterprise.
• Above & Beyond Award – Awarded to a woman at any stage of her career who has truly gone above and beyond her role to help drive the organisation’s success.
• Leader Award – Awarded to a woman whose significant contribution to the strategic and/or commercial direction of the business has increased productivity, innovation or employee engagement.
• Male Mentor Award, sponsored by Specsavers – Awarded to a man for his active commitment to advancing or championing the career progression of women in retail through mentorship.
• Rising Star Award, sponsored by Tesco – Awarded to a woman aged under 25 who is excelling in her retail career, making a valuable contribution to her organisation.
• Customer Experience Award – Awarded to a woman who has been instrumental in improving or transforming the customer experience.
• Outstanding Influencer Award – Awarded to a woman whose voice or social media strategy has successfully influenced the customer both on and offline. There will be no nominations for this award – the winner will be selected in partnership with everywoman and Barclaycard.
• NEW Disruptor Award – Awarded to a woman who is exceptionally creative within her role, in an unconventional and pioneering way.

Maxine Benson MBE, co-founder of everywoman, comments: “The changing face of retail is allowing more women to flex their creative muscles and prove how their innovative thinking is contributing to the growth of the sector. everywoman, with Barclaycard, is on a mission to celebrate the women who show just how viable and fulfilling a career in retail is. Research continues to demonstrate the value of role models to inspire women in the workplace and we look forward to welcoming a new wave of talent who will be the pioneers of retail as we’ve never seen it before.”

Entries are open until 13 May 2019 and winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in September.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post 2019 Barclaycard Everywoman On Retail Awards: The Changing Face Of Retail appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.